


Hello (We've Not Met)

by RedGold



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Flogan, Lucy is the Time Bandit, M/M, Slow Burn, Wyatt and Flynn are sent after her, Wyatt's Bi-Crisis, all other ships, and Rufus doesn't get paid enough to deal with these people, and probably, because everyone loves Flynn, because this is, but we'll see, eventually, history is changed in new and exciting ways, season one, the beginning of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-08-23 10:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16617311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedGold/pseuds/RedGold
Summary: “You’re a respected history professor, Miss Preston,” Flynn said, trying to appeal to her. “I would think someone who loved history as much as you would want to save it, not burn it down.”“Iamtrying to save it.” Preston moved forward, holding out a small journal. “And you’re going to help me.”





	1. Hello

**Hello**

Something exploded in the wreckage of the Hindenburg. It was just enough of a distraction for the mercenaries to get the drop on Flynn. Two of them had their guns trained at him, his own held loosely in his hand, pointing it at the ground so as not to give them a reason to shoot him while he thought of a way out of this.

 _Damnit, where is Logan?_ Flynn mentally cursed the man for disappearing after that reporter.

“I’m not your enemy,” the brunette woman said as she stood between the ex-military soldiers for hire.

“Then surrender yourself, and the Mothership.” He couldn’t help but try to throw some charm into his words. It had helped him out on more than one occasion.

She almost smiled at him, as if remembering something that made her happy and sad. “I can’t do that, Garcia.”

“You’re a respected history professor, Miss Preston,” he said, trying to appeal to her. “I would think someone who loved history as much as you would want to save it, not burn it down.”

“I _am_ trying to save it.” Preston moved forward, holding out a small journal. “And you’re going to help me.”

The pages of the journal were filled from edge to edge with notes and comments. Some of it was in English, some in Croatian. It was his handwriting, but that was impossible.

“You’ve always helped me,” she nearly whispered, then there was a slight upturn of her lips. “Apparently, we make quite the team.”

“Help you?” Flynn looked into her eyes and she seemed so sure, so confident… yet. “Why would I help a woman who murdered her own sister in cold blood?”

Pain flashed across her face and she stilled her jaw. “Rittenhouse.”

“What?”

“When you go back, ask them about why you were chosen. Ask them about Rittenhouse.”

A shot rang out and one of the mercenaries was hit, but didn't go down. Flynn’s so-called partner had finally showed his face. More shots were fired, further chaos ensued. By the time it was all over, the woman got away with the help of the second hired man, and the reporter was dead, having not escaped her fate.

Hours later, they were back at Mason Industries, and it all felt a little strange, a little off, that history had changed and they were the only ones who knew it.

“So, that’s not how it happened?” Mason asked as he sat in front of the computer. The newspaper article he brought up stated that the Hindenburg exploded upon takeoff thanks to the actions of an anarchy group.

“No,” Logan said while Flynn wrapped his head around it. “Everyone knew that the Hindenburg blew up upon landing. ‘Oh, the humanity’ and all that.”

“Oh the what?” Jiya blinked, sharing a blank look with everyone else.

“Nevermind.” Logan shrugged it off.

Agent Christopher crossed her arms and looked rather pensive. “So what was Lucy Preston trying to do by blowing it up on takeoff and killing, what did you call him?”

“One of History’s greatest dicks,” Flynn supplied, in reference to Rockefeller.

“Right.” She gave him a dour expression. “Is she trying to make the world a better place or something?”

“Depends on how you want to look at it,” Flynn said, once he finally settled on what his gut was telling him. “I think she’s trying to destabilize the US. Kick the country while it’s still on uncertain legs.”

“Why would she want to do that?” Mason asked. “Other than the fact none of you can make a proper cup of tea.”

“I think it has something to do with Rittenhouse.” Flynn looked right at Christopher when he said that. 

“What’s Rittenhouse?” she asked.

“You tell me.” He watched her every expression.

“I don’t know what that is,” she told him, then reiterated when he kept his eyes on her. “I don’t know. But I’ll look into it. Okay.”

Flynn had been around long enough, as a soldier in a war, and as a spy in the NSA, to know when someone was lying to him. Agent Christopher didn’t know who Rittenhouse was. And more frightening, Lucy Preston absolutely believed they were on the same side, would work together, in the future.

“Alright,” Christopher sighed. “The damage seems to be at a minimum, so let’s take this as a win.”

“Preston’s still out there,” Logan pointed out.

“And we’ll go after her the next time she jumps. So keep your phone on you, you’re on call,” Christopher told Logan and the man nodded like a dutiful soldier. She then turned to Flynn. “We were in a pinch and you were the closest person who could handle a gun and knows his history. I’d like to keep you permanently on loan from the NSA until we stop Preston, but I’ll understand if you want to walk away.”

“I do know my history,” Flynn told her. “And I take it as a personal offense she’s trying to destroy this country. I may be a proud Croat, but I’m also American, my mother was from Texas.”

“Huh,” Logan glanced over at him. “So I am.”

“I’ll make the arrangements then,” Christopher said as Flynn gave Wyatt a side glance. “Consider all three of you on call.”

“Me?” Rufus went pale.

“You’re the only pilot we got.”

The man reluctantly accepted his fate. Flynn still vividly remembered Rufus going off on the policeman. He’d been so impressed at Rufus’ tenacity that he had almost forgotten to pickpocket the cell key off of the man as Rufus tore into him. 

With a few last words, the group broke up. Rufus headed off with Mason to talk about something, probably technical things. And he and Logan went down to the showers and locker area to change back into their modern clothing.

“Yeah, I know it was stupid,” Logan admitted as he grabbed his wallet and keys from his locker, sliding them into his pants pockets. 

“Which part?” Flynn nearly laughed as he opened his own locker.

Logan put on his coat and closed the locker door. “You ever been married, Flynn?”

“Never had the pleasure,” he replied quietly. “But I’ve lost people I love. My father died in the War, my mother not too long after she brought me back here, my brother before I was even born. And as much as I wish I could save them, we can’t chase ghosts through the past. Not when we have the present to protect.”

"Yeah,” Logan bowed his head, trying to believe that. 

It hadn’t taken Flynn long to figure out the Master Sergeant. A helping of PTSD piled onto years of toxic masculinity induced by a likely abusive childhood. Flynn had seen plenty of hot-headed young men like Wyatt Logan before. 

“Listen,” Logan looked up at him, a bit too much honesty in those bright blue eyes, “it won’t happen again. I know you need a man beside you that you can trust. Just... never time travelled before, you know?”

“My first time too,” Flynn chuckled, thinking it all over. “You know, we work out a few more kinks and I think we’d make a pretty decent team.”

“I think we will.” Logan smirked. “Sir.”

“I am not _that_ much older than you, Logan,” Flynn groused which only fed Logan’s grin. 

“Call me Wyatt,” he said, then started to head out of the locker area. “Seeya next time Preston jumps.” 

Flynn watched him go and couldn’t help but acknowledge that Logan... Wyatt... was as adorable as he was cocky. This could be a horrible combination. The faster they stopped Preston, the better off everyone would be.

On the ride back to his place, he couldn’t help but think of Lucy Preston and the surety in which she spoke. That was the real reason he wanted to keep on the team. What was the journal that she had showed him? How did she get it? 

Who was Rittenhouse?

“Here you go,” the Homeland agent said from the driver’s seat.

Flynn glanced out the window, expecting to see his apartment building. Instead, he was met with a two-story Colonial Revival in chocolate brown with a burgundy trim. It was rather nice, a proper home, but... “This is not my house.”

The agent frowned, confused. “This is where I picked you up from. It’s the address on your paperwork.”

Flynn reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his keys. His apartment key was gone, replaced by a set of house keys and other random ones that might have fit a gate and other things. He didn’t even bother to check them when he put his coat on, just feeling that the weight was there.

“Can you wait here, please?” Flynn asked the agent. “Just for a few minutes.”

“Sure, I guess.” 

Flynn got out of the car and headed up the front path to the door. There were a few lights on, which, he had left in a hurry, so that didn’t strike him as odd. He tried the doorknob but it was locked. As he guessed which key would work, he thought about the few times he had considered getting a house. The housing market had never been good enough to warrant the emptiness he’d feel living in a house by himself. 

If whatever he did with the Hindenburg affected the market… and if it was a good fixer upper… well, he did enjoy working with his hands.

The door popped open and he was surprised not to hear an alarm pad start beeping. He worried he’d have to guess the code, though he could be fairly sure of what he would choose. But the alarm pad was glowing, operating, just not set. 

As he stood in the entry hall, he immediately noticed that the house was pleasantly warm, there was the faint smell of food, and perhaps a tv on in the background.

Laughter tore through the hall. A pixie came running at him and latched its arms around his legs. 

Flynn stared down at the seven-ish-year-old girl who was covered in glitter and sticky tape. Two wire and cellophane wings were attached to the brightly colored dress she wore. 

She looked up at him with eyes that reminded him of his mothers. “You’re home!”

“Iris,” another voice lightly scolded her. “You’re getting glitter everywhere.”

His head popped up, staring at the woman before him who was wiping glue from her fingers with a washcloth. She was very pretty, with light brown hair and a smirk of a smile that fell into a frown when she finally got a look at him.

On the wall, above the small table, hung a multi-picture frame. The photos were progressive. Of a wedding. Of a birth. Of a day in the park. Of a day at a Croatian beach. His own smiling face staring back at him.

“Sweetheart?” the woman sounded concerned. 

It took a moment for him to accept what his head was telling him. This little pixie with his mother’s eyes was his daughter. The woman, she was his wife, the mother of his child… and he’d never seen her before in his life.

Flynn attempted a smile. “Um, hello?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This little plot bunny attacked me during NaNoWriMo and so, here you go. It's a nice one-shot, but I do have ideas of where it might go from here after that twist of an ending. I don't know if I will ever continue it so I'm leaving it as a one-shot for now. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	2. What's Changed?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, what started as a one-shot with a twist is now a 16 Chapter story.  
> There will be one chapter for each episode.  
> I'm not going to retell the episodes, only parts that are relevant and/or had major changes.  
> Otherwise you can assume things happened more or less the same if not specifically mentioned.

**What's Changed?**

“Where? … When?”

Wyatt found himself back at Mason Industries faster than he thought he would. This Lucy Preston wasted no time in taking the Mothership out again. He really hoped they could get her this time. He made a fool of himself before and he needed a little redemption. 

“Hey, Rufus,” Wyatt greeted him as they walked up the steps to the launch area. “How did your date go?”

“About as well as can be expected… so… badly.”

Wyatt gave the man a good-natured pat on the back. He was going to say some comforting words, but Flynn practically ran into them. The normally cool and collected NSA agent looked like he was about to have a panic attack.

“What’s changed?” he asked them, his words coming in a rush. “What’s changed in your lives?”

“I still suck at dating.” Rufus shrugged. “So, nothing much. And you know you’re covered in glitter, right?”

Wyatt laughed. “If you were going to hit the topless bar for a lapdance, you could have at least invited us to come with.”

“This,” Flynn gestured to his attire, “was done by a seven-year-old giving me a hug.”

“Oh,” Wyatt blanched. “Wish I hadn’t said the thing about the bar.”

“What seven-year-old?” Rufus asked. 

“My…” he trailed off, looking completely lost. “My daughter.”

Wyatt and Rufus exchanged glances. 

“You never said anything about having a kid.” Wyatt was pretty sure something like that would have come up, especially when they talked about him not ever been married. But then, maybe Flynn was more private than Wyatt gave him credit for.

“I don’t,” Flynn was flustered. “I didn’t. I… I went to 1937 a bachelor and I came back to a wife and kid.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Mason walked up beside them. “You’re saying you were not married when you left?”

“I wasn’t.” Flynn took a breath and started to calm himself. He pulled out his wallet and from that a photo. He passed it over. “This is... shit, I didn’t get her name. Pretty sure the girl’s name is Iris.”

The photo was the pretty standard family photo fare. Flynn was holding his daughter up while his wife had her head leaned on his shoulder. They were all smiles and happy. It was honestly a very adorable looking bunch.

“You got a beautiful family,” Rufus commented.

“I’ve never seen them before in my life,” Flynn made sure his words were abundantly clear. 

Mason took the photograph and examined it. “Not even the woman? She’s not an ex paramour of yours?”

“That would at least make some semblance of sense,” Flynn was a touch sarcastic, starting to sound more like himself. Or at least what Wyatt knew of him from the one mission they went on. 

Wyatt couldn’t fault the man for being completely freaked out. Hell, he was probably taking it better than he would have if he came back to a family he’d never seen. Though something stabbed in him that this happened to Flynn. Why couldn’t Wyatt have come back to find Jessica alive through some weird twist of fate?

“When you left,” Mason kept musing, “you were wearing a wedding ring. When you returned, you were not. I didn’t think of it much at the time, often soldiers take off their rings during a mission so it doesn’t get caught on things.”

"I never had a ring," Flynn told him. 

“No, of course not.” Mason handed the photo back to him. “It’s now disappeared, vanished, into the time stream. And this daughter, she emerged from it, created in an instant. Fascinating.”

“Hey,” Wyatt got a little defensive of Flynn and his family. “That’s a little girl you’re talking about, not some science experiment.”

“Right, of course,” Mason acquiesced. 

“Okay,” Agent Christopher walked up to them. “I got some Civil War uniforms for you. One of our agents is a reenactor. I want you gone in twenty, ten preferred.”

“Hey,” Rufus got her attention, “did you know Flynn has a wife and daughter?”

She gave him a funny look. “Of course I do. That’s why I offered him the out. This is a dangerous mission.”

The next five minutes was filled with more of the same as they explained to Agent Christopher about Flynn’s predicament. Wyatt really felt for the guy, literally saddled with a family he didn’t ask for. 

Flynn’s phone started to ring and he pulled it out of his pocket. “This is her. Third time she’s called.”

“Srećo?” Wyatt asked as he saw the screen. It was an odd name.

“Means ‘my luck’ in Croatian,” Flynn explained as he declined the call. “It’s a term of endearment.”

“She’s worried about you, cause of course she would be.” Christopher sighed and took the phone from him. “You deal with Preston, I’ll sort this out.”

“How?” he asked as if Christopher had said she would drain the ocean.

“I have a wife too,” she told him. “I’ll think of something.”

Flynn looked like he was going to argue. This was his mess, sort of. But the mission took precedence and Flynn was a soldier. 

“So, you didn’t get her name?” Wyatt asked as he stood around the corner in the locker room, pulling on his Civil War uniform. Rufus had just left so he could start prepping the Lifeboat.

“Yeah, I ah, kind of panicked,” Flynn admitted, seemingly upset with himself that he did so. “I got out of there pretty quickly. Probably wasn’t my best move. Definitely not my proudest moment.”

“It’s not like we’re trained for these kinds of situations,” Wyatt pointed out. He was still pretty sure Flynn handled it better than he would have. At least Flynn left and didn’t try to muddle through only to really screw things up. “Just, don’t worry about it. It’s something to be dealt with when we get back. Let’s focus on stopping Preston from whatever she’s planning.”

Flynn nodded and they started to head out. “You know, Lucy Preston wrote a book about the day Lincoln was shot.”

“Let me guess, you read it?” Wyatt asked.

“Twice,” Flynn reluctantly answered.

~~~

“You should be working with me, not against me,” Preston’s voice was behind him.

Flynn turned to see her standing in period dress of burgundy and royal blue. She was so tiny in comparison to him, but she held herself defiant and commandingly. 

They weren’t alone in the train station waiting room. His eyes flickered to where several of her hired men stood, hands ready to draw their guns. The one that shot Wyatt was now behind him. Flynn had stupidly followed the man, led himself into an ambush. He should have known better, but he hadn’t exactly been completely focused on the mission.

“What are you trying to achieve?” Flynn said lowly so not to be overheard by those outside. “Are you trying to destroy this country?”

“I’m trying to protect this country,” she told him firmly. 

“From who? Rittenhouse?”

“Have you figured out who they are yet?” she asked almost hopefully.

“No,” he was a bit short with her. “Too busy dealing with the fact that I have a wife and kid now.”

That shook Preston who did a mental double take. The mask of time terrorist slipped to show the scared but determined civilian underneath. “You... what?”

Flynn couldn’t help but be affected by the sudden softness in her eyes. “I don’t know how yet, what changed. But I have a seven-year-old daughter now, and a wife I’ve been married to at least as long.”

“I... I’m sorry,” she nearly whispered. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

There was a strange familiarity, the way Preston looked at him. Her eyes glanced down to the journal in her hands, the one she showed him with his handwriting in it. In the light of the sun he could see, written in embossed gold lettering, the word FLYNN written at the bottom. He was going to ask about it but she stilled herself and her eyes turned defiant. 

“It doesn’t matter,” she cleared her throat. “This is a war. Sometimes mistakes are made.”

“That little girl is not a mistake,” he found himself quickly defending the daughter he had only known for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry, but the mission is more important,” she told him coolly.

“What mission?” Flynn asked, trying not to let his frustration show through. He was surrounded by hired guns, his partner was being patched up in a hotel room, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that this woman knew far more about him than she had any right to.

“To stop Rittenhouse.” The words were so firm and cold they sent chills down Flynn’s spine. “They murdered my sister, and they have done so much worse.”

“What do you mean?” 

Preston hesitated, as if debating something, but the choice was taken from her. A gentleman walked into the waiting area and everyone quickly hid their weapons, but still in easy reach.

“Miss Preston,” Robert Lincoln greeted the woman with a smile, then glanced around at the men. “Everything okay?”

“Robert, yes, my apologies.” Lucy Preston basically fangirled at the man, something that was clearly not an act. It was… actually kind of adorable and it made it easy to forget she trying to burn history to the ground. “I was just giving this gentleman some directions. So he could go home.”

“Ah, I see.” Robert smiled again and offered his arm. “Shall we?”

Preston took the appendage and let herself be led out. Only pausing long enough to look back and tell him. “You should hurry home, back to your family, before it gets dark.”

She was gone and this left Flynn alone with the hired men. They had their hands on their guns, but weren’t making the first move. 

“Her orders were clear,” the man said behind him. “Don’t hurt you unless you make us.” He walked back round to the front of Flynn, gun drawn and trained. “Don’t kill you unless you make us. So do us all a favor and go home, like she says.”

“You got a name?” Flynn asked. “Or should I just call you Hired Goon Number One?”

He chuckled. “Name’s Karl. And I already shot your friend. You should probably go check on him, then leave. Let us do what we came here to do.”

“And what’s that exactly?” 

Karl just smiled and chuckled again. He didn’t take the bait, and instead gestured to his men. They slowly filtered out, keeping an eye on Flynn as they did so. 

It would have been nice to have confirmation, but Flynn had a pretty good idea what Preston’s plan was.

“She’s going to take out the entire executive branch,” Flynn told Rufus and Wyatt back in the hotel room. “And a future president. To do so, right now, just as the war has ended? It’ll be catastrophic.”

“Okay,” Wyatt said as he tried to set up straighter on the bed, groaning just a touch from his wound. “What’s the plan?”

Any other day he would have appreciated the sight of a shirtless Wyatt who was a bit tousled. With the fate of the country in the balance, that alone would be enough to keep him on track. Not to mention the fact that Preston told his men not to kill him unless it was absolutely necessary. Yet they had no issue in shooting Wyatt, and probably Rufus. What was he to this woman? And why did it feel like she knew him?

Flynn kept on point, discussing what Preston’s likely plan was. After a bit of debate, they settled on their assignments. 

“Why can’t we save Lincoln too?” Rufus asked in all seriousness. “Preston is trying to make things worse, why can’t we make them better?”

“Because we don’t know what will happen if Lincoln lives,” Flynn argued back. “We think it would make things better, but we can’t know that for sure.”

“I hate to say this,” Wyatt sighed, “but Flynn’s right.”

Rufus looked at both of them as if he was betrayed. “Says the white people.”

“It’s not that,” Wyatt quickly defended. “I want to be on your side, I really do. But all we did in 1937 was save the lives of 36 people, that’s it. Then we come back and Flynn has a wife and kid he’s never met. Can you imagine the changes that could result in someone like Lincoln being alive?”

“How many people would we create,” Flynn said sadly, thinking of the little girl with his mother’s eyes. “And how many would we erase? The future’s not perfect, but it’s ours.”

~~~

“So, Lincoln was supposed to die,” Jiya asked as the team gathered around the computer screen with Agent Christopher and Mason.

“In our timeline, yes,” Flynn confirmed.

“And you are the tall foreigner who saved Robert Lincoln and General Grant from Booth and his accomplice who was never identified nor caught,” she was reading through the article. 

“His name is Karl,” he replied dryly.

“Well, you’re a hero.” Jiya clicked on a link and showed a painting of Flynn as he burst through a door to attack Booth and Karl. “This is hanging in Grant’s Presidential Library.”

“Hey,” Rufus perked up. “I saved the Vice President. Did I get anything?”

“Um,” she clicked on another link and an old photo of a white man popped up. “It says this guy saved the Veep.”

“That is so unfair.” Rufus said as Wyatt patted his back. 

After a few more minutes of this kind of unofficial debriefing, Christopher pulled Flynn aside and showed him to the conference room upstairs. Flynn knew what was about to happen and he thought he was prepared. Apparently he was not. 

Christopher laid the file down in front of him and he paused before opening it. He just didn’t know what to do or think about the situation.

But he opened it and started to read. 

“Lorena,” he tried the word out, finding it a beautiful name, for a beautiful woman, but it was utterly foreign to him.

“You met her, in Kosovo,” Christopher explained as he was still stuck on the basic information. “She was a translator.”

Flynn flipped through the pages of the report to find the specifics. “I remember these missions. The translator, it was a guy, Fitzpatrick, ah, Wendell Fitzpatrick.”

“Well, whatever you did, it meant that Fitzpatrick wasn’t there and Lorena replaced him.”

A cold chill ran down Flynn’s spine. Did they erase Fitzpatrick from existence? Or was his path simply altered? Perhaps he didn’t go into translation work or was sent some place else. Or did they create this Lorena who then went on to alter Fitzpatrick’s path by taking his job? He wasn’t sure if he wanted the answer to any of these questions. 

“Anyway,” Christopher continued. “All I found find out on short notice was that you saw each other off and on until 2006 when you retired out of the military and joined the NSA. You two settled down together, got married, and your daughter, Iris, was born in late 2009.” The tone of her voice shifted from neutral to soft. “By all appearances, you two seemed to have a good marriage.”

Flynn would hope so. He always thought he’d be a good husband and father. The kind who listened, who talked, who communicated. He just never found the right woman, or man, for that matter. So what was special about this Lorena to change that?

“What did you tell her?” Flynn asked.

“That you had a concussion,” Christopher answered. “It explains your disorientation and behavior. You were supposed to be placed under medical supervision but slipped past. But not to worry, you’re under a doctor’s care right now and it shouldn’t be long.”

“Did she buy that?” 

“No,” Christopher let out an appreciative chuckle. “But I think she’s smart enough to see that this cover story is for national security sake and leave it be. At least until you come home, as long as you do… come home.”

Flynn let out a sigh and ran his hand over his face. “I can’t just walk back in there and pretend to be her husband. It’s not fair to her, not to mention it would totally violate her consent if… if she wanted to…”

“Glad you think so.” Christopher gave a nod of appreciation. “You could claim amnesia, I’ll get a doctor to sign off on it. That way you can separate from her gently. Or you could rip the band-aid off and walk away, say sorry, it’s not working out. I could even fake your death, get you a new identity if you felt so inclined.”

“I have to tell her,” Flynn didn’t even have to think about it. “I have to tell her the truth. It’s the only way to be fair to her.”

“That’s not possible, this is a top secret project.”

“Then get her the clearance and have her sign an NDA,” Flynn replied firmly. “I’m about to wreck this woman’s life. She deserves to know why.”


	3. Two Options

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It will be a little bit heavy on the Flynn & Lorena here at the beginning, but only to establish how that all works since it's such a big departure from the original.  
> But Flynn and Wyatt have been put on the stove to simmer and that slow cook will begin to burn soon enough.  
> Also, a touch of Flynn/Lucy and Lucy/Wyatt is to be found as the story progresses.  
> Because this cast and these characters have a ridiculous amount of chemistry.   
> It should be criminal, truly...

**Two Options**

Lorena was used to knowing that sometimes she just had to accept she wasn’t going to be told the truth about certain things. That’s what happens when you work for groups like the UN and your husband works for the NSA. It was a fact of life.

But she knew Garcia would never lie to her. When it came to his work, he would simply tell her he couldn’t say and she left it at that. And even when he was gone for days at a time on some mission, she never worried about him not being faithful to her. It was just the kind of man Garcia was. 

So when she was asked by Homeland to drop Iris off at her mother’s so Lorena could be brought to a Mason Industries site, she was cautious. When they put an NDA in front of her, she got worried. After how Garcia acted when he came home the other night… 

What was so important now to finally tell her a secret?

Lorena signed the paperwork after reading through it, she was thorough like that. The Homeland agent, Christopher, then took it and excused herself for a moment. After about ten minutes she came back and asked Lorena to follow her.

They ended up in a conference room with a glass wall that overlooked some kind of warehouse facility. She did get a glimpse of the oversized web-cam looking thing that was sitting in the middle of the floor, but her attention was elsewhere. Garcia was standing about halfway down the table, and something was wrong.

He looked at her like he didn’t know her, it was the same look he gave a couple nights before. A concussion could explain it, but everything was far too secretive to be so simple. And there was something else, he just seemed… different.

“What’s going on?” Lorena asked him.

“Before I explain anything, you should see something,” he said and pointed to an open laptop sitting on the table. 

Lorena sat down in front of it, a sinking feeling dropping her stomach out from under her. Garcia wasn’t treating her like his wife, but like an asset. She wanted to demand to know what was going on, answers first. But her trust in Garcia was etched on her bones. So she would wait and see.

The video that played was a recording for an experiment. She could tell by how Connor Mason himself spoke, giving names and dates and other random technobabble. The camera was focused on the large web-cam she glanced at before. 

The rings on the machine started to turn, get faster. 

Then it was gone.

Lorena blinked. “Where did it go?”

“More like when,” Garcia answered.

~~~

Flynn could admit it, he was impressed. This woman he married in another lifetime was, well, the kind of person he would have at least had drinks with, that’s for sure. She was intelligent, savvy, and asked clarifying questions as he explained what happened. Despite the fact he could tell she was freaking out inside, she remained focused and outwardly calm.

“You don’t remember your daughter?” she asked and that’s when she started to crack as she tried not to cry.

“I’m sorry, no.” Those words hurt him harder than he expected. That he had a daughter, one he never knew, that alone was a fact that hurt too much to think about. 

Lorena put her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes, taking controlled breaths. He made no move to touch her or to speak to her. He wasn’t sure it would be welcomed.

The alarm sounded and her head shot up, alert. “What does that mean?”

“Means the Mothership jumped,” he told her and stood. He was going to walk downstairs and find out, but he didn’t want to leave her alone. 

He may not be in love with this woman, not even know her, but he felt a sense of responsibly towards her. It may have been born from the guilt of wrecking her life, but he wasn’t going to abandon her up there. It was the very least he could do.

A moment later, Christopher entered the room.

“Preston’s jumped back to Las Vegas, 1962,” she told him like she was about to send him on the mission, but then glanced between them. “Just tell us what we need to be on the look out for, I’ll send another agent.”

“Okay, 1962,” he quickly ran through everything he knew about Vegas at the time. “There was a lot of nuclear testing going on, it was actually called Atomic City.”

“You should go,” Lorena said, her voice turning very neutral. 

“We still have a lot to talk about,” he replied, feeling hurt for some reason he couldn’t fathom.

“I have a lot to think about, right now.” She didn’t look up at him or meet his gaze. “And you’re more valuable in the field. You know your history better than you can tell someone it.”

Flynn wanted to argue, but he knew it would be for his sake, not hers. He wanted to sort things out now, get it behind him. She hadn’t had time to let all of this hit her, to let it sink in.

“Alright, we’ll talk when I get back,” he told her gently.

“Tell the Rat Pack I love their music,” she almost laughed. “If you get the chance.”

“Sure,” he said, tucking away the fact that apparently his wife was into older music. It was just another piece of the puzzle as to why her.

~~~

“A black guy in the 60s, I’m basically invisible,” Rufus said and passed them the waiter uniforms.

“You’re a genius,” Flynn praised the man’s ingenuity. “Alright, let’s fan out and see if we can locate Preston or her men.”

They separated and started to walk the area. There was no way to know exactly what Preston was up to. There was just too much going on for there to be an obvious solution like the Hindenburg or Lincoln. Flynn hated to admit it, but he could only hope to get lucky on this mission.

He walked down the hall, having already made a pass through the north side of the building. At the end of the hallway was a Western Union station. Wyatt was standing in front of it and it only took a second for Flynn to figure out what he was doing.

Wyatt turned around and saw him. “It worked in Back to the Future.”

There were a hundred reasons why this probably wouldn’t work, but Flynn wasn’t going to point that out. “I’m sorry about your wife. I truly am.”

“Not as sorry as I am,” he admitted with something of a lost expression. Wyatt Logan would make a terrible spy, the guilt on his face so easily read. “Let’s keep looking for Preston.”

Flynn thought the man could use a hug, but this was not the time, nor the place, nor the era, to do so in a crowded hotel lobby. 

They instead walked around until they found themselves in the Copa Room where Sinatra himself was on stage. Flynn let himself take a moment to just breath that in. He had the odd thought of wondering if him and Lorena ever had the “free pass” discussion. If they had, and it included anyone, ever, then Dean Martin would have been in his top five. 

And considering she knew that he was coming here, that made things that much more awkward.

“There,” Wyatt whispered to Flynn, discreetly pointing towards a table. 

Flynn could see Preston, dressed up in a glamorous black dress of 60s fashion, sitting at a table with a very unsavory character. “That’s Sam Giancana, basically the biggest mobster in the country right now.”

“What could she want from him?” Wyatt asked as he glanced around the room, checking for Preston’s hired men.

“Who knows?” He started to look at the other individuals at the table. “He worked with the CIA and JFK to try to assassinate Fidel Castro.”

“Wait, really?” 

“Yeah.” It took Flynn a second to recognize the woman. “And that’s Judith Campbell she’s talking to.”

Wyatt moved slightly to get a better look at her. “Is she important?” 

“She was JFK’s mistress. She would pass messages back and forth between him and various others.” He started to wonder if this was all about JFK. But if it was, there were a lot easier ways to get to the man. 

Preston and Campbell stood from the table and headed towards the back, where the kitchens and service areas were. Flynn and Wyatt moved to follow, on the lookout for Karl. Didn’t take long to find him.

“Go,” Wyatt shouted as he got into battle with Karl and a chair.

Preston was rushing down the hall with another hired goon, Campbell in tow. Flynn let the more than capable Delta Force soldier take care of Karl and ran after Preston. Of course, the professor turned time bandit ended up getting away, but he saved Campbell from whatever Preston had in store for her.

Not that the woman was grateful at all. She practically glared at them as they sat her down on a chair in the hotel room. Then she started to look disinterested. A sure sign that shrewd mind of hers was up to something.

“Do you know a Christy Pitt?” Rufus asked and she shook her head no.

Great, not only were they woefully lacking in information regarding Preston’s plan, but the information they did discover was that Anthony had been working with Preston this whole time. 

And then Campbell slipped away from them, making the whole night feel like one big Comedy of Errors, without the comedy.

One car chase and shoot out later, the mission was a draw, at best. They didn’t change anything in the past, but Preston got away with the nuclear core. Anthony would use it to power the Mothership meaning they wouldn’t have to wait for charging to jump, and they would be untraceable through the power grid.

“I take it, it didn’t work,” Flynn said as they changed in the locker room. 

“It was along shot anyway,” he couldn’t hide the sadness in his voice.

“I’m sorry.” He genuinely felt for the man. If there was a way to bring his parents back, he knows he would have tried it too. 

Wyatt cleared his throat. “What about your… wife? She wasn’t here when we got back.”

“We were gone too long,” he told Wyatt what Christopher said. “She had to go get our daughter.” How could something feel so comfortable yet so foreign on his lips? “She asked that I meet her at the house when I’m ready to talk.”

“You going now?” Wyatt asked. “’Cause I was thinking of getting a beer.”

“Any other day, I’d say you buy the first round,” he replied honestly. “But this is something I really need to take care of.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Wyatt nodded and walked away. 

There was something self-destructive about the man. A depression that layered under the PTSD that Flynn hadn’t noticed before. Wyatt was a good soldier, but this could be a problem. He’d have to keep an eye on it.

But first, Flynn needed to sort his own life out.

A Homeland agent dropped Flynn off at his house. Flynn had been staying at Mason Industries for the few days it took to get clearance to tell Lorena the truth. He hadn’t gone back, so never picked up his car. He didn’t even know what he drove now. 

When he got to the door, he knocked instead of letting himself in. He kept calling it his house, but only for a lack of anything better to say. It was, technically, Garcia Flynn’s house. But it wasn’t _his_.

Lorena came to the door, checked who was at it, and there was a significant enough pause to notice. Flynn couldn’t blame her, hell, there were many things Flynn wouldn’t blame the woman for. 

“Come in,” she said after she opened the door, still trying to maintain that calm exterior. 

Flynn had no idea the layout of the house, he never made it past the entry hall, so he followed Lorena into the living room. That’s when his daughter rushed to him again, except this time, she didn’t attack.

“ _Tata_ ,” she said as she smiled up at him. 

The use of Croatian to call him dad should not have surprised him. He would have insisted he teach any child of his both languages, and of his culture. But being confronted by it made his heart do strange, yet wonderful things. 

Flynn couldn’t help but get down on his knees so that he could look closer at his _kći_ . 

“Mama said you hit your head.” Iris looked at him almost critically with worry. “That everything is fuzzy right now. And you need time to get better.”

“Yeah, I do,” he told her, accepting that this was the best way to deal with the seven-year-old. While he had no doubt those intelligent eyes could possibly grasp the concept of what happened, it would only be cruel to put that weight on a child.

Iris reached forward and gave him a hug and his heart stopped. There was something warm and familiar about it, like he’d felt it a thousand times before. But this girl was a stranger to him, and part of him of knew this, and he froze.

“Come on, Iris,” Lorena said, almost shooing her off him. “I told you no jumping on your father or attack hugging him.”

“That was not an attack hug,” Iris argued as she backed off. “That was just a hug, you specifically said attack hugs.”

Lorena sighed as if she really should have known better. Flynn couldn’t help but smile, his child a devious one. 

Iris was ushered off to her room leaving Flynn a moment to really take a look at the home he had built in another lifetime. It was eerie, in a way. The older books on the shelves were ones he knew he’d carried with him for a long time, some from Croatia. Newer ones were those he’d have bought. There was even a copy of Preston’s book on Lincoln. Idly he told himself to read it again and see what changed.

The general décor was comfortable, the furniture bought with his height in mind. He could lounge on the sofa and read without feeling cramped. The art on the walls was of his tastes, some of it traditional pieces from back home. But there were a few that were just a bit off. Not that they didn’t fit the overall design, they just didn’t fit with him. They must be Lorena’s additions. And it all flowed smoothly together. 

Lorena walked back into the room and he put all of his attention on her. 

She stared at him for a moment, her mask starting to crack as she said, “Upon considering all the facts, the only thing that I can conclude is that my husband, the man I married… is dead. You just wear his face.”

“I’m sorry.” He truly was.

“It’s not your fault,” she said, her eyes getting wet as she talked. “I married a soldier who became a spy. I knew one day this could happen, that I could lose you… him, on a mission. I just wasn’t exactly prepared for… this.” She gestured vaguely at him.

Flynn wanted to say he was sorry again, but how many times could he speak those words before they became diatribes. 

“The way I see it,” Lorena continued, “is we have two options here. The first one is you walk away.” Her eyes were so wet now that tears started to fall but she wasn’t exactly crying. “I get it, you didn’t ask for any of this. You weren’t there when we decided to have a child, to take on that responsibility. So if you want to walk away, I won’t argue, ask for child support or anything like that.” She wiped at the saline on her cheeks. “The only thing I ask is that you allow a small transition period to ease Iris into the fact her father is leaving. And that’s for her sake.”

“Sounds completely reasonable,” he said and was surprised by the roughness of his own voice. “And the second option?”

Lorena took a breath, she was keeping herself from breaking down despite the tears that kept working their way to the light. “Biologically, she’s your daughter. And you don’t strike me as a _completely_ different person than who her father was. So, if you want to get to know her, to be in her life, then I won’t argue with that either. We can figure out some kind of co-parenting, custody thing.” She cleared her throat and quickly added. “Anyway, you don’t have to decide right now, you can take a few days.”

“I don’t need a few days,” he told her as, in his mind, there was only one path forward here. “I want to get to know her, to try to be her father.” How could he walk away from his own flesh and blood? How would this be any different than if Lorena had been an old girlfriend who revealed she had their kid? “If you’re willing to let me try, then I will follow your lead.”

She gave no hint as to what she was thinking. If anything, her face had gone a little blank when she said, “Come with me.”

Flynn followed her to the stairs, up to the second floor, to the far end. She turned the knob on a door and pushed it open. Standing aside, she gestured for him to walk in. 

The room was small, cozy, but devoid of anything personal. 

“This is the guest bedroom,” Lorena told him as she stood in the doorway. “I moved all your clothing into the closet, your toiletries are in the bathroom. It’s small, only has a shower, you’ll hate it. But it will allow you some time to play catchup before you find a place of your own.”

He gazed around the room, and sure enough, the open closet door showed clothing in his signature style hanging neatly. On a desk-slash-dressing table, he saw a stack of photo albums next to a legal pad filled with neat and precise handwriting.

“Study materials, I guess you could say,” Lorena told him as he flipped open the top album which showed baby pictures. “And I wrote down important dates and information you need to know. Iris’ birthday, her favorite food and games, that kind of thing.”

Flynn was speechless at the thoughtfulness this woman put into the situation. She obviously wanted to break down and sob, and maybe she already had, or planned to do so later, but she took the time to do all of this so that her daughter could still have her father in her life. 

He had so many thoughts and questions, but settled on asking, “You knew what I was going to say?”

“I knew what my husband would have said,” she almost whispered. Clearly in pain, mourning the loss of the other Flynn, she turned to leave. 

“Lorena,” he said to stop her, then regretted his choice of word. Saying her name, in his voice, the familiarity of it seemed to cut through her. He made a mental note to avoid using it again. But he needed to tell her, “I hope that we can become friends.”

Every emotional drained from her face. “I can’t think about that right now.” She turned and left him.


	4. A Problem

**A Problem**

Lorena was right, Flynn hated the shower. It was small and he had to hunch because the showerhead wasn’t high enough. But that little discomfort was nothing in comparison to what he figured she must be feeling, so you wouldn’t find him complaining about it. The shower did its job, that’s what mattered.

It was early on a Saturday morning. Flynn was never one to sleep in on any day, even if it was a day off. His internal clock simply wouldn’t let him. So he dried and dressed, then picked up the legal pad.

Amongst the lists of dates and past events were notations of what could only be called family traditions. Things that they did regularly, like church on Sunday. When he asked Lorena about them, she said she only listed the activities so he wouldn’t be confused if Iris asked about them. She didn’t expect him to carry them on, he wasn’t beholden to any past actions. 

It felt like Lorena expected nothing from him, absolutely nothing at all. Flynn supposed that was a survival mechanism. 

Still, it was early morning, it was Saturday, and he wanted to spend time with his daughter to get to know her better. Since he moved in, he had actually spent most of his free time with her. They had sat, talked, played games. She was bright, and clever, and had inherited his deadpan snark already. 

A week with Iris and he already knew he would burn down the world if anything happened to her.

Flynn went to the kitchen and started to cook breakfast, something a bit traditional that his paternal grandmother used to make. Though he didn’t use quite as much lard, but a lot of paprika.

“You cooked?” Lorena asked as she stood like a doe in headlights at the threshold of the kitchen. Iris was already at the breakfast table, eating and telling him about some cartoon or another.

“I hope you don’t mind?” Flynn worried about acting like her husband, but he certainly couldn’t stop acting like himself. It was a delicate balance. He had already learned it was best not to call her by name, among a few other seemingly small, but very important things.

Lorena gathered herself and almost smiled. “Depends. Can you still cook?”

He stopped himself from chuckling, the sound seemed to turn her melancholy, so he reserved it for Iris. As she moved to help herself to the food, his phone rang, it was Christopher.

“Germany, December, 1944,” she said.

“The heart of World War II, great,” he replied dryly. “I’ll be right there.”

“World War II?” Lorena asked as he gathered his stuff and ruffled Iris’ hair. 

“Seems so,” he said then lightly bopped Iris on her nose with his thumb. “I’ll be back before you know it, okay?”

“I know you will,” Iris replied with absolute confidence.

Flynn smiled brightly at her, then got up to leave. 

As he passed Lorena, she said, “Punch a Nazi for me.”

Half a chuckle escaped his lips. “As many as I can.”

~~~

“I thought you said you could speak German,” Flynn angerly hissed at Wyatt.

“I can,” Wyatt defended himself.

“Maybe like a drunk tourist,” he scolded the man. He should have done the talking. 

Instead, he was going to have to find a way to knock out the German soldier who was clearly onto them without everyone in the bar knowing what’s up. 

“Americans,” the German sighed in a very distinctly British accent once they were in the back room. “You couldn’t have stood out more if you tried.”

Flynn and Wyatt exchanged glances, then Rufus stumbled in to join them.

“I take that back,” the man frowned.

“Are you British Intelligence?” Flynn asked him.

“Yes, and you’re very lucky I was here.” He was extremely put out. “Now, can you explain to me why _you_ are here?”

“Um, well,” Wyatt started to say. “We’re looking for a traitor. A couple of Americans who may be trying to give Germany an advantage.”

“How good is your intel?” the man asked. 

“Fairly,” Wyatt seemed confident enough. “We know they’re in the area.”

“Hhmmm.” The agent thought it over. Eyeing them carefully. Flynn knew the look, trying to decide how much trust to put in people who are probably lying about something. “Alright, let’s get out of here before you give away the game. See if we can’t find your traitors.”

“Thank you, uh…?”

“Name’s Fleming. Ian Fleming.”

“Ian Fleming?” Flynn managed to keep his voice even despite the fact he wanted to do nothing more than to completely lose his cool and fanboy. 

Wyatt was having a harder time of it.

Fleming just looked at them like they were, quiet probably, mad… but eh, that’s American’s for you.

~~~

The plan was simple, Fleming was going to get into the party as his German persona. Flynn was coming with him as a diplomat from the Independent State of Croatia, which was a puppet state for Germany at the time. Flynn and Fleming would get von Braun, or Preston, or hopefully both.

Flynn was fixing his burgundy tie that went well with his pinstripe suit when Wyatt knocked and let himself into the room. 

“How did you find a suit in 1944 Germany that would fit you?” Wyatt seemed genuinely curious. 

“Fleming sourced it,” Flynn answered. “He was really good at his job.”

“And a really good writer,” Wyatt really sounded like a fanboy. “You read his work?”

“Admittedly no,” Flynn confessed. “But blatant misogynism aside, I did love his movies.”

“Yeah, that was the thing about Bond though. Girls want to sleep with him, men want to be him.”

Flynn let out a laugh as he pulled on his suit jacket. It showed how much he trusted Wyatt that he didn’t even think about how what he was going to say might be received. “Depending on the Bond, it would be hard to pick which I’d choose.”

Wyatt was silent for a moment, then he asked, “Which Bond you would choose? Or if you’d want to be him or sleep with him?”

“The latter,” Flynn answered, the joviality in the room seeming to drop away. He turned just enough to meet the man’s confused gaze. “We going to have a problem, Wyatt?”

“Huh?” It took him a second. “Oh, no, I just… your wife, sort-of, wife… I thought you were straight. But you know, there is nothing wrong with being gay.”

“No, there isn’t,” he replied evenly. “And I’m not gay, and I’m not straight. I find there are things to enjoy about both men and women.”

“Oh… okay.” Wyatt still looked to be a bit lost.

“I ask again, are we going to have a problem?” Flynn didn’t want to berate the man but he needed to make sure where they stood with each other. They were about to go into a potential powder keg. He needed to know that Wyatt still had his back.

Wyatt looked straight at him with his baby-blue eyes. “No problem. Seriously. I… I just… I don’t know.”

There was something in those eyes, something that didn’t read homophobic. But Flynn wasn’t sure what it was, only that maybe it was something Wyatt needed to get out. “I think you do,” Flynn said softly.

The other man glanced away and took a breath. “You know I’m from Texas, and I know your mom is from Texas, so I don’t want to insult her by proxy, but there are a lot of homophobic assholes in Texas.”

“I’m aware,” Flynn told him. “Texas is… Texas.”

“Yeah,” Wyatt said quietly. “Anyway, my father, he was a right bastard. Put a lot of garbage in my head, you know, when he wasn’t beating on me. So, I admit, I was one of those homophobic assholes for a good while there. But then I got out of Texas, met other people, and I learned I was wrong.” He took a moment to scratch at his neck. “Just sometimes, old thoughts pop up and I have to take a second to clear them away. I didn’t mean for you take anything by it.”

Flynn had already guessed most of that, and it meant something for Wyatt to share it with him. “Sometimes it’s hard to unlearn things, but it’s good that you’re making that effort to correct yourself. I can respect that.”

“Thanks,” he replied as if he wasn’t sure what to do next. “You know, my grandpa Sherwin, he isn’t far from here right now. He served in the 101st Airborne Division. He was a good man. I like to think he was the reason I turned out to be half-way decent.”

“Well then, let’s go make grandpa Sherwin proud.”

~~~

Flynn could see von Braun. It shouldn’t be hard for Flynn to talk the man into walking with him, getting the scientist away from the crowd. Flynn had a natural charisma, it worked well in his favor as he ran missions for the NSA.

But there was one person it didn’t seem to work on: Lucy Preston.

“I can’t let you take von Braun,” she said as she stood in front of him. 

Preston was dressed up for the party in a shimmering 40s style dress of dark blue with burgundy accents, her hair in delicate curls. He would have thought her highly attractive if not for two things. The first being that he knew she wasn’t alone. Flynn was trying to locate Karl whilst also keeping his eye on her. Secondly, he was far to occupied with wanting to know why she was doing this, and how his hand writing ended up in that journal.

“You realize you’re working with actual Nazi’s,” Flynn told her in a low voice, almost a growl. “How can you sleep at night?” 

“You think I sleep?” she shot back painfully. “Do you think I want to be here? I’m doing whatever I have to in order to stop Rittenhouse.”

“Rittenhouse,” he spat the word he was tired of hearing. “Just tell me who they are, enough of this cloak and dagger crap.”

She stared up at him, into his eyes, and he softened at the pain he saw in hers. Pain and familiarity. 

“Rittenhouse,” she said, her face becoming stern, “they murdered my sister. And I will do _whatever_ it takes to bring them down.”

“By destroying history?”

“They are history,” she bit out. “They’re a group who has their hooks in our very institutions since the beginning. They are trying to shape the world in their image, one that would subjugate women, and see men like you… removed from the populace.”

The way she talked about him, it didn’t sound like she was referencing the fact he was half-Croat. But how did she know? It wasn’t that he hid his sexuality, but he didn’t advertise it either. And again, there was a familiarity in how she spoke to him…

“What about the journal?” he asked, and Preston looked like she was going to tell him everything, but Fleming had the worst timing. In fact, it felt like fate itself didn’t want him to get those answers.

“Hello, my dear,” Fleming said as he came up behind her and put a gun to her back. “I have no doubt you are as dangerous as you are beautiful, so please, don’t make me not be a gentleman and have to shoot you.”

Preston smiled up at Flynn. “I see you found Ian Fleming, quite clever of you.” She glanced over her shoulder at Fleming. “I’ll have you know women aren’t just sexual conquests.”

Karl appeared, his gun in Fleming’s back. With the hired man came several German soldiers who had them surrounded. Even Fleming realized that a fight would have been useless.

“You see,” Preston sounded rather happy with herself as she scolded Fleming. “Women are quite capable of being devious and calculating. You’d do well to remember that.”

Surrounded by enemies, Fleming lowered his gun which was taken by Karl. Their only hope now was to find an opportunity to make a break for it, or hope that Wyatt and Rufus saw what happened and could do something about it. 

But Flynn wasn’t thinking about that right in that moment. No, as he looked down at the very self-satisfied woman who was, up till very recently, a civilian with no military or intelligence training… Flynn could admit it, he was impressed.

~~~

“This all sounds very familiar,” Mason said when they finally returned after saving von Braun from Preston during their own daring escape. Mason tapped at his phone and showed them an IMDB page. “Yes, it’s very similar to the plot of _Weapon of Choice_.”

Wyatt stared down at the image and he nearly died. “There’s a new Sean Connery James Bond movie?”

“Well, not new,” Mason told him. “It came out in… ’64? Arguably Connery’s best, but I think that has more to do with the story and villain in this one.”

“I have got to watch this,” Wyatt told himself, out loud. “Like, right now.”

“You do that,” Rufus patted him on his back. “I think I’m going to try another date with Jiya, if she’ll say yes.”

“You should be able to bring the film up on the television in the lounge,” Mason helpfully informed Wyatt. “Have at it. I’m heading home, I should think.”

Wyatt was very much ready to watch this new Bond film from his favorite Bond. But he didn’t really want to have the experience alone. Because these movies were escapism when he was young. Sure, Bond was technically a lousy spy, that didn’t matter. Bond was in charge of his own destiny, and he always came out on top.

“Want to watch it with me, Flynn?” he asked the man as they headed down to the locker room to change.

Flynn checked his watch. “Yeah, Iris would be in bed now, so, no other reason to head home.”

Wyatt was a little too into the idea of the movie that he didn’t quite catch the sadness in the man’s tone or the way he nearly cracked on the word home.

Instead, they grabbed some beers from the kitchen where someone thought they were clever in hiding them. It seemed that Mason turned a blind eye to it, so long as no one abused the privilege. 

There was also popcorn, because there is always popcorn. 

They sat down in the lounge chairs and put on the film. Yeah, it was as good as Mason said it was. It was also a bit of a departure from the typical Bond fare. Wyatt had to check just to make sure nothing else had changed, but _Weapon of Choice_ was the outlier film.

This was the only Bond film where not only was the main villain female, but she was the only villain, and was decidedly not a Bond girl. 

Quite clearly based off Lucy Preston, she nearly took out Bond through a cunning and devious plan. Bond was saved by his own wits and smarts. And he, of course, had his Bond girl. This was the daughter of the scientist McGuffin and not Preston herself.

“I am not that old,” Flynn grumbled after the movie. The scientist was a man from Croatia, a mix between von Braun and Flynn. He was old enough to have a twenty-something daughter for Bond to charm and bed.

“I wouldn’t take it personally, _sir_.” Wyatt kept himself from laughing.

Flynn just glared at him, then broke into a laugh. “At least I’m not the bumbling American.”

“Touché,” Wyatt went ahead and laughed. “Want to watch _Dr. No_ next?” 

“Love to, but it’s getting late.” He checked his watch again. “I don’t want to disturb Lorena when I get in.”

“No, I understand.” Wyatt nodded and watched the man head out. 

He put on _Dr. No_ and, at some point, Wyatt suddenly remembered what Flynn said about having to choose between wanting to be Bond, or sleeping with Bond. Something scratched at the garbage his bastard of a father had dumped on him. After a split second, it was gone, and Wyatt continued to keep watching. 

But the scratch marks where still there, trying to reveal something underneath.

~~~

Flynn could admit to himself that sitting down and having a beer with Wyatt while watching a James Bond film was really nice.

As unfortunate as it was, Flynn was attracted to Wyatt. Who wouldn’t look into those bright blue puppy dog eyes and not find him adorable? But when shit went down and he went into fight mode, there was an intensity and dishevelment to Wyatt that Flynn could also appreciate. 

If Flynn allowed himself to think of such things beyond just stating the obvious. 

Wyatt was straight (probably) and he was his partner as they chased after a time hoping terrorist. If that wasn’t enough, Flynn had a family now. Well, he had a daughter. He still wasn’t sure how to classify Lorena. She was still grieving the loss of her husband, so Flynn tried to avoid use of those terms around her. Especially as they were still married, technically.

She was Catholic, and they had a good case for annulment, but it was classified top secret. The dissolution of their marriage was something to deal with later, when he moved out.

Flynn walked into the house and set the alarm. Iris would be in bed now and Lorena would be just about getting there herself. He planned it pretty well, he thought, trying to be considerate of his… housemate? Yeah, that seemed like a good term.

Lorena was in the kitchen, cleaning up and putting some stuff away. She glanced up at him and it happened again. That second of hope that he was _him_ again before it was crushed. He had asked her if maybe this was a bad idea, but she insisted that up and leaving was an even worse idea, and told him to stay, for Iris’ sake.

“Hallo,” she greeted him, speaking German. “{ _I take it since we’re not all speaking German, you were successful._ }”

Flynn was too tired to stop himself from chuckling at the joke. It was little things like that which helped him to understand why she was the one he settled down with. 

Her eyes dropped and she went back to pulling the dishes out of the dishwasher. 

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I think we did good this time.”

Flynn was about to mention Ian Fleming when something caught his eye on the kitchen island. Poking out from under a newspaper was a leather spine that looked familiar. He pulled the paper away and there, laying on the counter, was the journal Lucy had showed him, that held his handwriting. The word FLYNN emblazoned on the bottom right.

This one was new, of course, nothing written in it. He picked it up and asked quickly, “Where did this come from?”

“Oh, you can have it if you want it,” Lorena said when she saw what he was holding. She seemed completely disinterested.

“But where did you get it?” he asked more firmly.

“It was part of a set,” Lorena explained as she pulled out a matching spiral bound diary from her bag sitting at the end of the counter. “I do a lot of work for Bridgewater, translating legal documents and the like. They give me things all the time, usually after a big contract is finished.” She almost added ‘you know that’ but stopped herself, Flynn could tell. “Anyway, I prefer journals I can lay flat, so I was going to give it to Iris to color in. Why? Is there a problem?”

Flynn stared at the journal… he didn’t even know where to start answering that question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! From here on in, Wyatt's Bi-Crisis is going to get worse and the twists are going to keep on coming...


	5. Fighting For

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! <3

**Fighting For**

“March 2nd, 1836, San Antonio,” Jiya read from the computer.

“That’s the Alamo,” Wyatt said and everyone looked at him. “I’m from Texas, we all know that one.”

Rufus asked the all-important question. “How do you make the Alamo worse?”

“I’m sure Preston will find a way,” Flynn replied dryly.

“Then you best all get going,” Christopher told them and they went to grab period clothing.

Flynn noticed that Wyatt had been a little quiet, quieter than usual, as they prepped for the mission. For a moment he wondered if it had anything to do with Wyatt realizing Flynn was bisexual, but that wasn’t it. Whatever was on Wyatt’s mind, it was internal, not external.

“Grenades?” Flynn questioned when they strapped themselves in. “You’re bringing grenades… into a time machine.”

“I know what I’m doing,” he said as he secured the bag. “And if this is going to be my last shot at Preston, I’m going to make it a good one.”

“What do you mean, last shot?” Rufus asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Oh, yeah, so, I’ve been fired,” Wyatt nearly laughed but there was enough hurt there to know he was telling the truth.

“How can they fire you?” Rufus asked but Flynn already figured that part out.

“Because he hasn’t stopped Preston yet,” Flynn explained. 

“Yeah, well, neither have you,” Rufus pointed out, “and you’re just as handy with a gun.”

Wyatt was buckling himself in. “Flynn’s good with history, that’s his role here. My only job is to stop Preston and her men, which I haven’t done. Not even close.”

“We’ve thwarted her plans,” Rufus was quick to say.

“But she’s still out there,” Flynn reluctantly said knowing he hadn’t been quite as proactive at stopping Preston himself. In fact, he had been far too curious about her, the journal, and the future to risk not getting answers by arresting or killing her.

“You know, it’s fine,” Wyatt spoke in a way that it was clear he wasn’t fine with it at all. “I get my chance, I’m taking it, otherwise, you’ll get a new tactical guy. You’ll like him Flynn, he’s as tall as you.”

Flynn frowned at that, seeing Wyatt trying to hide so much under his smirk. To quote one of Rufus’ heroes… he had a bad feeling about this.

~~~

“And they gave me a medal for it,” Wyatt was near tears as he told his story to Bowie. He didn’t know what had come over him. He hadn’t even told his therapist how he felt during his mandatory sessions after the incident. Just said what he needed to say to get himself back in rotation.

But here, in the Alamo, in the very same position he was in all those years ago, knowing that he was failing everyone… again…

Bowie didn’t question him, didn’t ply him with any kind of empty words. He simply called out to his men and put Wyatt’s plan into motion. It would give them time to hopefully get the women and children out. Failing that, at least they would take a sizable chunk of that army to hell with them.

After the man walked off, Wyatt stood up to do… something. He honestly couldn’t remember what because he noticed that Flynn was off to the side. He had been helping move heavy supplies for the women. It was clear he had heard everything.

Wyatt couldn’t look the man in the eye, his own shame and guilt bubbling up. Not wanting to risk what he would see in Flynn, he turned and walked away.

~~~

It was clear she had overstayed her welcome, and as a woman, this was a very dangerous position to find herself in. So Lucy bowed her head and left the tent, Karl following on her heels.

“What have I done?” she whispered to herself as they made their way to their horses so they could ride back to the Mothership.

“You couldn’t have known,” Karl offered in his usual detached way. 

“Couldn’t I have?” Lucy stopped them, pulling the journal from her bag. She ran her thumb over the embossed FLYNN written on the cover before flipping it open. “All the discussion here about the importance of Texas to America and Rittenhouse. From Spindletop to the Gulf. Maybe… maybe the Alamo wasn’t the way to go.”

“Got to trust your instincts, professor,” Karl told her with a shrug. “You knew there wasn’t going to be an easy way through this.”

“I knew people would die,” the words tasted like acid in her throat. “Necessary sacrifices to stop Rittenhouse, but… it was supposed to be soldiers, neo-Nazi’s and the like… not… women and children.” 

It would occur to her later, on their ride back to the Mothership, about John William Smith. 

The army started to move and things got more intense. They were gearing up to attack, early, and there was nothing Lucy could do to stop what she had set in motion. 

Lucy hated this, she hated not being in control of what was happening. She looked down at the journal and when Flynn gave it to her, she thought that finally, _finally_ she was in control of the chaos around her. But with every mission it felt like all she was doing was losing control bit by bit. 

She had put her faith and trust in Flynn… she needed to hold on to that.

~~~

“Where’s Wyatt?” Rufus asked as they herded everyone into the escape tunnel.

“I’ll get him.” Flynn pulled his gun and headed out towards the choke point where most of the fighting was happening.

He found the man crouched behind a wagon, trading shots with the Mexican soldiers. Flynn laid down some suppression fire so he could cross the few feet he had to in order to take cover with Wyatt.

“Rufus did it,” Flynn told him over the din of the battle. “We’re getting the women and children out. Let’s go.”

“No,” Wyatt told him and Flynn thought he misheard, but it was clear in Wyatt’s eyes, he wasn’t coming. “No, you guys go. I’ll stay here and give you a head start.”

“What?” Flynn said before he had time to digest all of that.

“You were a soldier, Flynn,” Wyatt said, not meeting his eyes. “You know how it is. Let me do this one good thing.”

“Oh, I do not have the time for this,” Flynn nearly growled. He holstered his gun and grabbed Wyatt by the shoulders so he had to look at him. “You survived, you completed the mission, you did exactly what your men needed you do to make their sacrifice worth it. There is no shame in that. There is no guilt in that.”

“You don’t—”

“I was sixteen, Wyatt,” Flynn definitely growled at him this time. “Sixteen when war broke out in my country. Seventeen when my father died fighting for our independence. Eighteen when my mother could finally get us out of there. I know _exactly_ how you feel right now.”

Wyatt stared at him, blue eyes wide as he absorbed this information.

“You can stay here and die if you want to,” Flynn continued on, “but you’ll be doing that for yourself. Not for your men, and certainly not for us.”

“Flynn,” he said the word as if he didn’t know what to do with it.

“The war isn’t over, Wyatt. We need you.”

Shots came dangerously close to them. Flynn risked a glance around the cart to see how the battle was going. The only answer was: not good. If they were going to get out of there, it was now or never. 

Looking back at Wyatt… he had chosen now.

~~~

As soon as they got back to 2016, Lucy went to the computer and brought up the Wiki article on the Battle of the Alamo. She had history texts, of course, and far more sophisticated areas she could access, but Wiki was faster and she felt like she was about to throw up.

There, in one of the subsections, was the discussion of how the women and children escaped thanks to the efforts of a brave soldier.

Lucy breathed a sigh of relief.

There was also commentary that there may have been more than just one man to help them escape. That records show the group mentioning a tall foreigner and negro who helped as well. But due to racism, this was dropped out of the retellings in the newspapers as the _Victory or Death_ letter circulated. 

Her plan didn’t work.

She read through the letter, knowing quite well this wasn’t Travis’ original. There was something raw about it and she knew it had to have been Flynn. It had the depth and emotions of man who went through the Croatian War of Independence, not to mention his later actions in Kosovo.

Lucy pulled the journal out again, laying it on the table in front of her. She remembered clearly the day Flynn gave it to her. Everything had made perfect sense in that moment.

Flynn trusted her to take down Rittenhouse. 

Gave her the power to save her sister.

When did everything start going wrong?

~~~

“I’d like to lodge a complaint,” Flynn tried to use his height to intimidate the Homeland agents, but Christopher was a tough nut to crack.

“Wyatt is being replaced,” Christopher didn’t back down. “The longer Preston goes on unchecked, the more of chance she has to really mess things up.”

“It’s fine,” Wyatt told him, taking his orders in stride like a good soldier does.

“It is not fine,” Flynn told him nearly as harshly as he spoke to Christopher. “Look, I trust Wyatt. We can work together, watch each other’s backs. And on missions like this, that’s a hell of a lot more important than whatever target scores this other guys has.”

“We can replace you too,” Christopher pointed out.

Flynn nearly laughed. “Right. Where are you going to find someone else who can both field-strip an assault rifle and write you a dissertation over the Defenestration of Prague?” 

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You might be surprised.”

“Yeah,” Rufus butted into the conversation, “but where are you going to find another pilot?”

Everyone looked at the man who crossed his arms and held his ground.

“I trust Wyatt too,” Rufus explained. “If he goes, I go, and I’m the only pilot you got… so…?”

Christopher glanced between all three of them. Oh… she was not happy.

~~~

Wyatt was… confused… about a great many things actually. Some of which he refused to acknowledge. But in this instance, it was quite clear.

“Why?” he asked Flynn when they were finished changing.

“Why what?” Flynn replied as if he didn’t know what Wyatt was talking about, which he was sure that was a lie.

“I get Rufus,” Wyatt decided to play that game. “He didn’t… he didn’t see me… didn’t see what happened out there. But you, you did.”

Flynn stared at him for a good long moment, doing that thing where he licks his lips as he thinks and carefully chooses his words. “What do you want me to say, Wyatt? Yeah, you chased after that reporter at the Hindenburg, but you still came back and did your job. You took on Preston’s men and saved the Secretary of State while suffering from a bullet wound. You had my back in Vegas and Germany.” Flynn sighed and splayed his hands. 

“And I almost left you at the Alamo,” Wyatt pointed out, the fact eating at him, the way he had acted.

“Yeah, and that’s a problem,” Flynn agreed. “One that isn’t going to be solved by ignoring it.”

“I’m not ignoring it,” he said knowing damn well it was a lie.

“Not anymore you won’t,” Flynn told him pointedly. “Look, I’m not your therapist, don’t want to be, but I am your friend. And I have been in your shoes. So if you want to talk, we can talk.”

Wyatt was feeling defensive. “And if I don’t want to talk?” 

“You will,” he said with the dead certainty of someone who’s been there. “And until then, I know I can trust you to make the right decision when it counts.”

“You want to put your trust in me?” Wyatt honestly couldn’t fathom that. Why would anyone want to trust a failure like him?

“Yeah, I do,” Flynn was almost soft. “Because at the end of the day, you will do what needs to be done. And there is no shame in that, because it saves lives.”

Wyatt didn’t know what to say. It was hard for him not to judge his actions in lives he lost, rather than ones he saved. His intel had taken out a terrorist cell and stopped several planned attacks. He, and his men, saved countless of civilian lives that day. It was far too abstract of a thing for him to think about. 

Flynn’s watch lit up and he looked at it. “Iris will be getting home from school soon. Are you going to be okay if I leave?”

Wyatt’s eyes flicked up at the taller man’s, “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?” Flynn eyed him with concern. “I can stay, we can get some beers?”

“Nah, it’s okay, you go see your little girl.” Wyatt let himself smile, things becoming clear to him. “You know, when I first joined the Army, first got those ‘what the hell was I thinking’ jitters while on mission, one of my C.O.’s pulled me aside and told me if I was having trouble getting over that hump, then I just needed to figure out what I was fighting for, focus on that, and I’d be okay.”

“Smart guy.”

“Yeah,” Wyatt laughed lightly at the memory. “I realized I was fighting… I was fighting to make my father angry, and my grandfather proud. I was fighting to give Jessica a better life because we were country poor. I was fighting… to be a better person. I just forgot that for a while.”

“It happens sometimes.” Flynn reached up and gave him a friendly squeeze on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Wyatt Logan. Your grandfather would be proud.”

Wyatt looked up at the man and smiled thankfully. There was something about Garcia Flynn that put him at ease, must be the guy’s annoying natural charm. “I think he would be, thanks.”

Flynn smiled back, then thought better of it and let Wyatt go. “I’m going to head out now, but that offer to get beer is always on the table.”

“Appreciate it, _sir_.”

That earned him an eye roll from Flynn who laughed and shook his head as he walked away.

Wyatt let out a long, deep breath. The truth was, he had forgotten what he was fighting for a long time ago. Wyatt had told himself he wouldn’t become his father, but that’s exactly what he had ended up doing, and Jessica suffered for it.

Now, Wyatt had a new team. He had friends who showed him he was lost and pointed him in the right direction, even if they didn’t realize that’s what they had done. And Wyatt… he was going to fight for them.


	6. Lucy's Reason

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title was inspired by "Flynn's Reason" which the title of the original music that plays during the scene where Flynn tells Wyatt about what really happened to his family. If you haven't gotten the soundtrack with Robert Duncan's work, you really should.

**Lucy’s Reason**

Normally, Wyatt wouldn’t mind if he found himself handcuffed to a chair, a beautiful woman standing in front of him with a determined look on her face. But today, he just wasn’t feeling it.

“Wyatt,” Preston said his name as if she was disappointed in him. “We’re on the same side, you know?”

“Pretty sure I’m on the side that doesn’t involve destroying America,” he answered as casually as he could considering the circumstances.

Preston rolled her eyes and grabbed a chair, sitting right in front of him. She was dressed in a pants suit of orange and beige befitting of the 70s.It was interesting how someone could look so soft and razor sharp at the same time. 

In her hand was the journal she always carried around with her. The letters may have been upside down, but they were easy enough to read.

“Yes,” she answered the question that was written in his eyes. “Flynn gave this to me.”

Wyatt didn’t even know where to begin processing that information. Garcia Flynn, his partner, his _friend_ , was working with Lucy Preston?

“Or, he will,” Preston corrected herself, rolling the journal over in her hands. 

“He… will?” Wyatt tried to wrap his head around that. As far as he knew, no one could go back onto a timeline they already existed in. Because if they could…

“Yes, he does.” She opened the book it feels like she’s genuinely reading from it. “He talks about you, you know? About how you never got over the guilt you feel for what happened to your wife.”

If sympathy was what Preston was going for, she went the wrong way about trying to get it. How dare she bring up Jessica. Even if she was right about how he felt.

“You leave her out of this,” he replied hoarsely.

“I wish I could,” she replied sadly and closed the journal again, holding it against her like a prized possession. “You see… we’re a lot alike.”

“I doubt that,” he bit out. “I didn’t murder my sister in cold blood.”

“I could never hurt my baby sister,” she whispered, and there was too much pain for it to be a lie.

A moment passed where she gathered herself. Lucy Preston was a tough lady. He’d seen her order around her mercenaries and dominate men twice her size. Where did a history professor even begin to even look to hire gunmen and put together all of this? 

For a time he thought maybe someone else was in charge, like Karl or Anthony. It became quite clear that this was all Preston, she was the one they needed to be afraid of, even though she never picked up a weapon. She was crafty, and she was clever, two various dangerous traits to go up against.

But in that moment she looked so sad and lost… and guilty. It reflected in his own.

“Has Flynn told you yet? Who Rittenhouse is?” she asked him.

“Flynn knows?” Wyatt was in such shock he said the words before considering if that was a good idea.

“Yes, I told him, in Germany. I should have told him from the beginning. I just…” she trailed off as if she was both hurt and confused.

Wyatt was angry, a deep kind of cold anger, that Flynn hadn’t told him this. Not telling Christopher, maybe he could understand that. But him? It felt like a betrayal on levels he didn’t realize existed.

“My mother is dying,” Preston continued once she collected herself, “but you probably knew that. It would have been in my file.”

“It was,” he resisted the urge to say he was sorry. Wyatt didn’t like things he couldn’t fight, and cancer is a shitty thing.

“When she was diagnosed, and started to do chemo, it was… bad.” Preston didn’t look at him as she spoke. “The fact she’s still alive, as such as she is, it’s a miracle, really. But she didn’t know how long she had, so she told me and my sister to come over and we were introduced to a man, Benjamin Cahill.”

Wyatt had never heard the name before and he wasn’t sure of the relevance. He tried to wriggle his hands out of the cuffs again, but it was no use. If he just had a paperclip or other small thin piece of metal…

“I was told that this man, he was my father,” Preston spoke the word as if she didn’t know what to do with it. “And my sister, she was actually my half-sister.”

“That wasn’t in your file,” Wyatt said, suddenly more interested in this strange turn of events.

“Yeah, well, neither is the fact that I am part of Rittenhouse,” she replied coldly.

Wyatt was going to scream if they didn’t stop going around in circles. “What is Rittenhouse?”

“A group of people who think they know better,” she replied bitterly. “Who think they can control everything, and they almost do. And it was my mother’s great honor and pleasure to tell me and my sister that we would be carrying on that legacy.”

The pain in the woman’s voice cut through Wyatt like a knife.

“My sister, she… she didn’t want any part of it, and neither did I.” Preston took a deep breath, fighting through. “But I was afraid, not of getting hurt, but of disappointing my mother.” She laughed as if that was better than crying. “My sister was smart, she was fierce, and she wasn’t going to let them tell her what to do, or control anyone like that. She believed in free will.”

The room went quiet and Wyatt could see her replaying the memory in her eyes.

“I know nothing about guns,” she admitted, fighting back tears. “I thought silencers were silent, that’s how they are in the movies. But they don’t silence the shot, do they, just take the sharpness out of it. I didn’t know what I heard, not until my baby sister bled out in my arms on the kitchen floor.”

“I’m sorry,” he found himself saying.

“It was my fault, I should have protected her.” Preston may not have even heard him. “I should have stood up to my mother, to Cahill. Instead… instead I stood back and let all this happen. I made a bad decision, and it was the biggest mistake of my life.”

Wyatt wasn’t going to admit that she was right, in this at least, they were the same. He screwed up and that got his wife murdered. All it takes is one bad decision.

“I know that one day, somehow, we will save the people we love,” Preston promised him, and despite himself, he wanted to believe her and hold her to that promise.

~~~

“How are you a spy?” Wyatt whispered as Flynn tried to get through the open window.

The man was a good fighter, deft with a 9mm, but so damn tall it was like putting a rectangle through a square. Actually, it was exactly like putting a rectangle through a square.

“Do you want to be rescued or not?” Flynn groused as he used a pin to pick Wyatt’s handcuffs.

“I dunno,” Wyatt said as he rubbed his now freed wrists. “You want to tell me about the journal with your name literally all over it?”

Flynn stared down at him and knew he had been caught out. He licked his lips and said, “We’ll discuss it later. We need to get out of here.”

Wyatt agreed, but it wasn’t over.

~~~

They were all down in the locker room, alone, away from prying ears, and Wyatt was livid. Flynn could tell by the clenched jaw and tense muscles.

“You said you trusted me,” Wyatt bit out and it hurt Flynn to hear those words. “And you both have been lying to me, from the beginning.”

“Hey man,” Rufus got defensive, that spark of defiance that would come out when he got backed into a corner. “They threatened my family. I do trust you, with my life, but we’re talking about my mother, and my little brother.”

Wyatt was in that kind of petulant child mood where there was literally nothing you could say to bring him down. It was the unfortunate swing side of what Flynn had seen at the Alamo. All they could do was wait it out until he was ready to see reason again.

“What’s your excuse?” Wyatt asked him.

“I just want to know what the hell is going on,” Flynn told him coolly. “I have a wife and kid that was never supposed to exist. And there’s a journal with my handwriting in it that I didn’t write.”

“But you will,” Wyatt looked him straight in the eyes and he could see the look of betrayal in them. 

“Something isn’t adding up, Wyatt.” Flynn sighed. “A many some things aren’t adding up. If Rittenhouse is threatening families and murdering people like Preston said, then I think it’s something we should look into.”

“That’s not the mission, Flynn.”

And there it was, the port in the storm that was Wyatt Logan. He needed something that was solid, a firm foundation. He had lost everything, some of it of by his own doing, and that made his life feel like it was spinning out of control. But orders, a clear path of what to do, that was something he could grab onto to hold himself steady.

A couple of the techs started to come down the stairs and Wyatt jerked. He needed a step back, and it looked like he was smart enough to take one.

“I guess we’ll see the next time Preston jumps,” Wyatt said and made his way out, passing the techs.

“And just when I thought we were starting to gel together as a team,” Rufus said wryly once the techs were gone.

“It’ll be fine,” Flynn assured him. “Once he’s cooled down and had a chance to think it through, he’ll understand.”

Rufus looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. This whole Rittenhouse thing has us all on edge. If what she said to Wyatt was true, about her sister, mom, that Benjamin Cahill guy… something just ain’t right.”

“I’ll see if I can find anything,” he assured the man with a pat to the shoulder. “Might as well put those NSA skills to good use.”

~~~

The funny thing about NSA skills is that they involve a lot around the art of lying. It wasn’t so much telling things that were false, it was about dressing up or dancing around the truth. And if it came up in conversation later, Flynn would simply say it hadn’t occurred to him until after he left Mason Industries that he had heard the name Benjamin Cahill before.

Flynn was flipping through the photo albums Lorena had left out for him. 

Most of them were of Iris, from the day she was born through the last vacation they took, three months before _it_ happened. That was the only way they could seem to refer to his return after visiting the Hindenburg. The old Flynn, Lorena’s Flynn, he had been erased, died. And like Mason said, Iris appeared in a blink of an eye, to Flynn at least. 

But Lorena lived those years with their daughter, and a part of him couldn’t help but sometimes think of her as Lorena’s kid. Not that he didn’t want to be Iris’ father, it just felt like Lorena was far more her mother. 

The last album he skimmed through was of their wedding. He had asked her about it, but she mumbled something about making sure he knew who all had been there, in case it ever came up. Flynn thought she was covering a mistake, that she hadn’t meant to give it to him. It had been wedged between two other thicker albums and he didn’t even notice it was there the first time. 

It hurt to see pictures of himself, on his wedding day, without his parents there with him. But by the look in his eyes, he was happy, as if he knew they were there with him in spirit. Or maybe it was just enough to have this woman by his side. 

A woman who was nice, kind, and funny… when she wasn’t sad and withdrawn. 

In fact, the woman in the photos, he had only seen her once, for a quick moment, that first day. Her smirk had fallen when she realized something was wrong and it never came back. And it was a shame, because he would have really liked to have gotten to know the woman in the photo. The woman who smirked even as she kissed him.

But just like her Flynn was gone… so too was that Lorena. 

It seemed two people died that day when he stepped off the Lifeboat. 

There were footsteps out in the hallway, and that drug Flynn out of his melancholy exanimation of the situation.

“Hey,” he stopped Lorena in the hallway as she was carrying a now empty basket from Iris’ room. 

It was laundry day, well, it was the girl’s laundry day. Flynn had taken on doing his own clothes, because it didn’t seem right to make her do it. He continued to put his money towards the bills, making the house payment and all that. This seemed reasonable as they shared the house, but he wouldn’t expect her to do his own menial tasks like laundry.

“Yes?” she asked, turning towards him and looking a little tired.

“Do you have any older albums? Stuff with my mom, from when we came over?” He knew he still had them before, and he couldn’t believe he would ever get rid of them just because he got married. But if there had been any kind of accident or fire he was unaware of…?

“Yeah, they’re in the closet,” she told him and turned away, heading towards her room at the other end of the hall.

Flynn followed out of habit, that’s what you do when someone is doing something for you. You want to make sure you can help them if they need it and not act as if they should wait on you hand and foot. But he got to the threshold of the bedroom and it was like he hit an invisible wall.

He’d been in the house several weeks now, but he never once even looked into Lorena’s room… what had been their room. 

The first thing he noticed was the bed, big and spacious to hold his frame comfortably. Lorena wasn’t especially short, but she wasn’t tall either, and she was likely drowning in it all alone. 

Like the rest of the house, it was a mixture of his personality and hers, from the colors to the shapes. Only, there was something a little less put together about the room. Lorena kept a tidy ship, always making sure things were put away at the end of the night. But in there, it was like she kept giving up halfway through doing anything. 

She went into the closet and Flynn stepped back into the hallway. It wasn’t his place to be in there seeing as he knew the disheveled nature came from her being constantly reminded of what she lost. And that it was only a matter of time before he discovered everything thrown out. The fact she had been able to put up with it this long was testament to her strength of will. 

But she didn’t do it for him, she did it for her daughter.

“Here you go,” she said as she handed him a stack of albums and a photo box. 

“Thank you,” he replied softly. 

“Dinner’s at seven,” she nearly mumbled and started to head down the stairs.

“Hey,” he stopped her again. “You don’t have to cook dinner all the time. I’m more than happy to pull my weight more than just weekend breakfast.”

Lorena stared at him for a solid moment, as if he was a snake of an unknown venomous nature. “Did you cook Istarska jota in your timeline?”

“I didn’t very often,” he admitted, “because I can only cook far more than I could ever eat. I might be rusty at it, but I’d be happy to try.”

“That’d be nice.” Lorena almost smiled at him. “Iris really likes it.”

“Then I’ll make sure to do my best.”

Lorena nodded, then turned away to disappear down the steps. Flynn sighed, once again wondering what he was doing. 

He had a passing attraction to Wyatt that wasn’t passing, only building into something he was afraid to name because the man was his partner. He was trying to build a relationship with Lorena, a friendship, but it was like trying to court a ghost. And then there was the familiarity of Lucy Preston which came with a stack of emotions he dared not unbox.

It seemed like everywhere he turned, he was sitting himself up for failure. And he was going to fail while not even knowing what he was trying to achieve.

Back in his room, Flynn flipped through the box of old photos. He remembered this from his own timeline, kept in a similar box, though not as nice. They were images of him as a child, growing up in Croatia. His mother and his father, happy and prosperous… until things in the country got bad and the war broke out. 

He picked up one photo, his parents gazing at each other with smiles on their faces. Even though there was always this underlying sadness in his mother’s eyes, a scar of the past, there was never any doubt she loved, and she would show that to those she cared about. Every time he ran across the photo in the other timeline, he couldn’t help but wish he would find someone who looked at him the way his parents looked at each other. 

Apparently he had, and now she could barely look at him.

Placing it aside, he found the ones he was searching for. It was of a house party that his parents had thrown when he was twelve. His mother had gotten yet another promotion thanks to her brilliant engineering mind. Lockman was putting her on all sorts of private, top security projects. 

In one of the photos, she was standing with her boss from Lockman, Bill. Another man is just off to the side, toasting the photographer. 

Flynn turned the photo over and written in his mother’s neat cursive were the words _William Bartholomew_. And right under that… _Benjamin Cahill_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's maybe not what you think? 0.o  
> I regret nothing. -.-
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	7. Destiny, or Not

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! <3

**Destiny, or Not**

“Wyatt!” Rufus shouted the name just as Flynn saw a small piece of metal go flying into the swamp water.

Idly Flynn wondered if the recorder would ever be found in the future and confuse some poor archeologist or geologist when they realized how long it had to have been down there.

Wyatt was a goddamn mess. 

They told Wyatt they trusted him with their lives, and then he found out they had been lying to him. Rufus about the recordings and Flynn about his apparent connection to Lucy Preston. Wyatt didn’t take it well, and he went a little too far off the handle. No wonder his marriage had been so rocky and ended so badly. 

But Flynn wasn’t lying when he said that when it came down to it, Wyatt would do what needed to be done. Because that’s what good soldiers, good people, do. 

The two men continued to bicker while Flynn followed, trying to figure out Preston’s game play. They hadn’t even seen her since they landed in 1754. Karl had showed his face and managed to damage the Lifeboat before getting away. From a tactical standpoint, it was a smart move. Trap them in the far past and they could no longer ruin her plans.

Except… the Lifeboat was bound to be found at some point, and who knows how that could change the course of history.

And if Flynn died during the French and Indian War… how would he write the journal, let alone give it to Preston?

Nothing was making sense to him, and he was spending far too much brain power on the quandary. Otherwise, he probably would have noticed them being surrounded by the Shawnee.

Well… shit.

~~~

Wyatt worked his hands against the ropes, but it was no good. Even if he dislocated his thumb or broke a few bones, he wasn’t getting out of this. It seemed like none of them were getting out of this.

“I should have told you both the truth,” Flynn said as they waited to learn their fate. The man didn’t sound like he was giving a deathbed confession, just that he finally got a chance to get a word in. “But honestly, I don’t know what the truth is. And it seems to get more complicated each time we jump.”

“I was just afraid,” Rufus admitted. “I’ve always been afraid, just a part of being black, but Rittenhouse… that’s a whole other level of fear.”

“Could have fooled me,” Wyatt told him, then clarified, “about always being afraid. Fact is… you’re the bravest one here.”

“He’s right, Rufus,” Flynn agreed. “We signed up for this a long time ago, you didn’t. Yet you’ve been right there, blowing shit up and saving people. We couldn’t do this without you.”

“I…” Rufus trailed off for a moment, looking between them. 

Wyatt let out a long breath, trying to release whatever anger was inside of him. 

He told himself he wouldn’t be like his father. He wouldn’t be that kind of person. And every time he was, he made an excuse as to why this time, this time it was okay, it didn’t count, it was different. But he was lying to himself. 

“I’m sorry I went off on you guys,” Wyatt finally said, always surprised at how good it felt to get these things off his chest. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. Not trusting you two was just the most recent.”

They all went quiet. Perhaps this is what it was meant by the life flashing before your eyes. All Wyatt could think about was every mistake he ever made, even the ones he tried to tell himself weren’t.

“Man,” Rufus sighed, “I could really go for Chocodile about now.”

Wyatt blinked. “A what?”

“A chocolate coated Twinkie,” Flynn explained, and when Rufus looked at him, he said, “My daughter loves them. It’s a reward snack.”

Rufus laughed. “Your daughter has good tastes.”

“Must have got it from her mother,” Flynn deadpanned.

They chuckled and laughed, an easy kind of thing that friendship is. Then they sobered up, being reminded they were tied to posts, captives of Natives who had every right to hate them.

Once again, it was Rufus who saved the day.

“You may go,” Nonhelema told Rufus as the men cut his bindings. “You did not ask to be here. You can have your freedom.”

Rufus took a few steps forward, glancing between Nonhelema, the Shawnee, and Wyatt and Flynn. He was afraid, but he took a breath, and he was brave in spite of that fear.

“With all do respect, ma’am, but these men, they are my friends,” he told her, his voice barely shaking. “I am here, with them, because I want to be. Because, believe it or not, we are trying to help people. And…” he paused for only a heartbeat, “I’m not leaving here without them.”

Nonhelema kept her stern expression, her brother whispering in her ear. 

Wyatt thought this was it, they were done for. He could only hope that whatever way they planned on executing them, it would offer some means of escape… through an entire camp of Shawnee warriors… 

Memories of the past crept up on him and all he could think was that he failed them again.

“My brother says I should kill you with them,” Nonhelema said and that was it, they were goners. “But my brother is not in charge.”

Wyatt’s head snapped up and he looked directly at Nonhelema… and he had hope.

~~~

The Mothership landed in the old church they had taken to use as their hideout now that they couldn’t be traced. There was something symbolic about the cracked walls, broken pews, and bright stained glass windows.

Lucy had never been all that religious, at least when it came to organized religion. But she knew that something had to be out there, some kind of force… a god. Because when her sister was murdered, and Lucy was threatened with the same if she didn’t tow the line, she prayed. She prayed to god…

And god gave her a time machine.

Karl jumped out of the Mothership and she looked up at him expectantly, asking, “How did it go?”

“Pretty good,” he answered, moving to the side so the rest of the men and Anthony could disembark. “We damaged the Lifeboat, but not severely, it’s possible they could fix it.”

“That’s good.” Lucy pulled the journal towards herself, tapping a finger on it. “We’ll wait a day. If they don’t return, then we’ll go back for them.”

“You think maybe they’ll see reason, then?” Anthony asked. “Stop working against us?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted without shame. “Eventually Flynn will be on our side.”

“Not if he’s dead, professor,” Karl pointed out. “Abandoning him to the 1700s is kinda dicey.”

“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t?” Lucy smiled, staring up at the blue lights of the Mothership. “You know, as a historian, we’re taught a very interesting dichotomy. The past is both fixed, and in flux.”

Karl frowned. “Come again?”

“History is constantly in flux because we’re always learning new things about it. Making discoveries that change the way we look at the past. Even I’m not immune to this.” Lucy softly laughed, thinking about the changes to her book about Lincoln’s assassination. She, apparently, had been a proponent of an unknown soldier, Denzel Washington, having saved the Vice President, even though the documentation to support this was largely ignored.

“But what happens, happened,” Anthony said as he sat down on the other side of the table. “The view might change, but the past is fixed… at least until I created a time machine.”

“Exactly,” she whispered the word.

“So which is it then?” Karl asked. “Is the past still fixed, or now in flux?”

“Well that depends.” Lucy smiled up at him. “Do you believe in destiny, or free will?”

“I believe in getting paid,” he answered honestly.

Lucy chuckled, then took a long breath, laying both hands on the journal. “Flynn gave me this, he _will give_ me it, and if that is what he is destined to do… then he will most surely survive 1754.”

~~~

“You are not putting that on,” Flynn told Wyatt as they stood over the dead Frenchman.

“Well, you’re not wearing it,” Wyatt said as he started to pull the jacket off. “It wouldn’t fit you.”

“It’s covered in the blood of an 18th Century French soldier!” Flynn nearly shouted. “One who’s been dead for who knows how long? It’s not sanitary!”

“You got a better idea?” Rufus asked.

“No,” Flynn admitted, “but give me a chance to think of something that doesn’t involve Wyatt getting a bloodborne illness.”

“We do not have time for this.” Wyatt continued to remove the Frenchman’s uniform much to Flynn’s displeasure. 

“I hope you’ve had all your shots,” Flynn grumbled.

~~~

Lucy Preston sat at the computer, doing some idle searches. It had been hours since they left Flynn and the others in the French and Indian War. She was looking for any sign of them in the past. Where they might be to know where to pick them up.

It wouldn’t be necessary.

“That looks like the Lifeboat,” Karl said from the other desk where he had his feet propped up.

“Yes, it does.” Lucy smiled, a sense of pride coming over her. “The Pennsylvania Orb Incident, one of the earliest UFO reports in the United States. Seems the metal orb disappeared in front of several French soldiers.”

“So, they fixed the Lifeboat and escaped?” Karl was thinking that over.

“Not necessarily,” Anthony pipped in from where he was working on the Mothership. “Depending on the damage, they might have jumped, but not completed it properly.”

Lucy chose to believe they had made it, because that only strengthened her beliefs. Flynn was going to work with them, they were going to stop Rittenhouse together, and save Amy. 

“Should be easy enough to check,” Karl said and stood up. “I’ll have someone go by the Carlin residence, see if the pilot is back.” He paused. “You know, professor, I can have someone take him out, easy. Then they can’t jump after us.”

“Yes, you’ve said,” Lucy said quietly, glancing down at the journal again. There were things in it, thoughts and observations that were becoming clearer. She felt she gained a greater understanding of Garcia Flynn with every word she read and reread. “Flynn needs to know what he’s up against. He needs to see what Rittenhouse is capable of. He can’t do that if he’s stuck in the present.”

Karl glanced between her and Anthony, then ultimately shrugged. “Whatever you say, professor. I suppose it’s all meant to be this way anyway.”

Reaching up and twisting her locket between her fingers, thinking of her sister’s who image laid within, Lucy certainly hoped she was always meant to save her.

~~~

“Second round is on you, Wyatt,” Flynn told him as he set the beers down in front of them.

“Deal.” Wyatt grabbed a bottle. They were sitting in a bar not far from the Mason Industries site. After nearly dying in 1754, they all agreed they could use a drink.

Rufus held up his beer. “To learning how to blacksmith in under an hour.”

“To not getting shot up full of mercury,” Flynn chuckled, tapping his bottle against Rufus’.

“To not getting a bloodborne illness,” Wyatt joined in.

“You are damn lucky, Wyatt.” Flynn pointed the drink at him before taking a swig.

“I get that a lot,” he laughed and sat back, taking a long draft. “Speaking of lucky…”

Wyatt lifted his coat up from where he had tossed it on the spare chair, pulling a white and blue box from under it. He passed the box to Rufus whose eyes lit up. 

“No way!” Rufus took it and stared at it like a prized position.

“Last box in the store. Flynn and I thought it was the least we could do,” Wyatt explained the gift of Chocodiles. “You saved our lives back there.”

“Yeah, well,” Rufus nearly blushed.

“I couldn’t ask for a better man on my team,” Flynn said in all honesty.

Rufus laid the box down on the table. “I am sorry I lied to you guys.”

“Water under the bridge,” Wyatt said and both men just looked at him. He had been the one to react badly, felt betrayed, and it was about time he came clean. “I’ll be the first to admit my behavior was a little uncalled for. We all made mistakes, some of us more than others. I’m sorry for my part.” 

The men sat in silence as that truth sunk in. Wyatt was trying to be a better person, he really was. But unlearning behaviors are tough, especially when they’re beaten into you.

“Well,” Rufus picked up his beer, “what’s the point of having a time machine if you can’t fix your regrets?”

“Here, here,” Flynn agreed and tapped his bottle lightly against Rufus’. 

“If only it were so easy,” Wyatt said as he picked at the label of his beer. He barely glanced up to see Flynn giving Wyatt that dark and intense look that he never could understand.

“You know, we are a team,” Rufus mused. “A… Time Team.”

The men all glanced at each other, agreeing that yeah, yeah they were.

“To the Time Team,” Wyatt lightly laughed as he raised his drink.

“The Time Team,” Flynn and Rufus say as they all tapped their bottles together.

“Man, we live weird lives,” Rufus chuckled and shook his head as he sat his beer down. 

“Tell me about it,” Flynn replied dryly. 

“How is all that going, by the way?” Rufus asked, tearing into the box of Chocodiles. 

“I suppose better than can be expected?” Flynn shrugged and looked a little deflated. “I mean, Iris… she’s… she’s everything I could have hoped for in a kid.”

“You did raise her,” Wyatt pointed out. “Technically.”

Flynn flashed those dark eyes at him again and Wyatt realized his mistake. Flynn knew exactly where the line was drawn, and what he _technically_ missed out on. Wyatt gave him an apologetic nod of his head. 

“And Lorena?” Rufus asked, seemingly oblivious as he literally inhaled a Chocodile.

“Holding up pretty well,” Flynn answered if it worried him. “Or maybe not. I don’t know what she was like, before. I don’t think I would be able to tell if she was on the verge of a breakdown or not.”

“You looking for a new place?” Wyatt asked, finishing off his beer.

“I should start, yeah.” Flynn leaned back in his chair, his long frame stretching out as it disappeared under the table. “But Iris’ birthday is coming up, and the holidays. I’ll move after that, so not to ruin everything for her, for this year at least.”

“Have you considered making a go of things?” Rufus asked.

“What?” Flynn asked, nearly choking on his drink.

“I dunno, I mean, you fell in love before,” Rufus pointed out, unwrapping another of the sweet treats. “Stands to reason you’d two are, well… compatible.”

Flynn stared blankly at Rufus until he said, “No wonder you’re floundering with Jiya.”

Wyatt laughed, then tried to cover it. Rufus looked at him like a traitor. 

“People grow and change,” Flynn told Rufus. “I wasn’t the same person ten years ago, and neither was her. The thing is, her and… the other Flynn, they grew together.”

“Yeah, but,” Rufus struggled with his words, “love is love.”

Flynn rubbed his hand down his face. “I am not drunk enough for this.” 

“That’s my cue,” Wyatt laughed and stood, patting Rufus on the shoulder. “Next round’s on you.”

“I see how you are,” Rufus groused at him good naturedly. “I save you two white boys and the brother still has to pay for his own drinks.”

There was a little back and forth about who all saved who. Wyatt left them to argue as he headed over to the bar. When he glanced back, the two men were laughing. He was pretty sure Flynn was saying something about the sugar content of the Chocodile and how it would rot Rufus’ brain.

As he waited for the barman, Wyatt was reminded of his wife, Jessica, and how she tended bar. She was the first woman he ever loved and he thought he lost the world when she was murdered. But Flynn was right, people grow, and if he was honest with himself, they had grown in two different directions. 

That didn’t stop him still loving her, it just made him a shit husband.

But Rufus was right too… love is love… and maybe he could love again. It was the first time he really thought about that, and he wanted to push the feelings away, unsure of where they came from.


	8. Why Are You Here?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't post again until next week, have too much going on this weekend.  
> We're at the half-way point, thank you for reading! <3

**Why Are You Here?**

“This might have nothing to do with Apollo 11,” Flynn told them after they disembarked the Lifeboat upon landing in Houston, July 20th, 1969… well, after he had a chance to let the nausea pass.

“This is the day of the moon landing.” Rufus was the last out of the ship, per usual. “You said so yourself, if she messes this up, it could completely derail the space program, stop inventions, give the Russians a solid lead, muck up the Cold War.”

“You were pretty thorough,” Wyatt agreed, the man also having to take a second. They had mostly gotten used to the Lifeboat’s rocky ride, but todays jump had been especially bad.

Flynn licked his lips, he was thinking, trying to decide how much he should tell his teammates. He knew he couldn’t tell Christopher because she might have pulled him. As for Wyatt and Rufus, he trusted them, but the NSA side of him cautioned discretion. Wyatt looked up at Flynn with expectant eyes and Flynn realized it was time to come clean.

“My mother’s from Texas,” Flynn started to lay it all out. “Specifically Houston, she worked for Lockman Aerospace. First in admin, then later in research and design after she got her engineering degree.”

“She was an engineer at Lockman?” Rufus said with appreciation.

“Even I know that’s pretty big,” Wyatt added.

“Oh, wait, Lockman has hydrodynamic testing and research facilities in the Adriatic,” Rufus put it together before Flynn had to explain. “That’s how she ended up in Croatia.”

“It’s where she met my father, yeah,” Flynn was being assaulted by too many memories. Ever since he heard it was today, of all days, they would be coming to Houston. “But that’s a few years from now. Today, today she’s watching the moon landing like everyone else… and…”

It hurt to think about it, so he rarely did. And now, now he was there… 

“Flynn,” Wyatt said, putting his hand on his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he cleared his throat. “Today’s the day my brother dies.”

Wyatt looked to Rufus, then back to Flynn. “You had a brother?”

“Gabriel,” Flynn answered, not remembering the last time he said the name. “He had a severe bee allergy, mama didn’t know about it. She was watching the landing, she didn’t see him collapse… and I don’t think she ever forgave herself for it.”

“I’m sorry,” Wyatt told him, his baby blue eyes a touch too soft, they almost hurt to look at.

“Yeah, man, that’s rough,” Rufus added. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you want to try to save him?” Wyatt asked and it was clear he wasn’t judging him, or even going to stop him. He simply needed to know so they could plan accordingly. Of course Wyatt would respond that way, he would save his wife in a heartbeat if the opportunity presented itself. 

Wyatt’s reasoning only registered in the back of Flynn’s mind because yes, he wanted to save his brother, but, “I can’t. Mama might not take the job across the world if she still has a son in school… I might never be born… and so neither would Iris.”

It hurt to think about loosing the daughter he had only known a few months. He wasn’t going to risk erasing her.

“Maybe your mom is the distraction,” Wyatt suggested. “Preston knows this is an important day for you personally, so she’s hoping you focus on it rather than whatever they have planned?”

“Or,” Rufus chimed in, “Apollo 11 is the distraction and this is a way to take out Flynn?”

“There’s a lot easier ways,” Wyatt pointed out. “And a lot less obvious ones too.”

“Preston doesn’t want to erase me,” Flynn decided that this was the only piece of solid truth in this whole mess. “She still believes I’ll write that journal and bring it to her in 2014.”

“Right,” Rufus said wryly, “because we’ll totally invent the technology to travel on our own timeline just so we can go back and support her career change to time terrorist.”

“It’s what she believes.”

Wyatt rubbed his head and then held up his hand. “Alright, we cover both bases. Rufus and I will go to NASA and check it out. Flynn, you find your mom, make sure she’s not the target.” He took a breath. “I’m only suggesting you do it because you know what she looks like, where she worked and lived. If it’s going to be too much for you, I understand. Just tell me what I need to know and we’ll switch.”

Flynn thought it over, so many conflicting emotions swirling inside of him. He’d give almost anything to see his mother again, but she wouldn’t know him. As for his brother, he only saw him in photos, but would it hurt worse to actually met him before…

“Flynn?” Wyatt was soft again, and in his eyes was far too much understanding. Those baby blues were going to be the death of him, knew it.

But that was later. Right now Flynn needed to decide what he was going to do. Ultimately this was decided by that one little detail Flynn hadn’t mentioned yet: Benjamin Cahill. 

If the story Preston told to Wyatt was to be believed, then this might be the only chance Flynn had to figure out how her biological father was connected to his mother.

“I can do this,” Flynn said firmly once he gave himself a second to orientate. “You go to NASA, I’ll check on mama.”

~~~

The pain was something he could have predicted, but it still hurt.

His memories of his mother were when she was so much older, and sadder. Not that she wasn’t happy and in love with his father. Not that she didn’t adore Garcia and shower him with affection. But there was always that scar of sadness, in the back of her eyes… a mark which would be created today.

And there was his brother, playing on the equipment, laughing. He was about the same age as Iris. Just as active and rambunctious. Gabriel would have been a much older brother to Flynn, but still a brother. Someone for Flynn to look up to and get into trouble with. 

So caught up in watching Gabriel, he only saw Preston as she sat down next to Maria. Being distracted was becoming a very bad habit, he was a better agent than this, he was… better than this.

Flynn started to case the area, looking for Karl or one of the hired mercs. If the goal was to do something to his mother, he didn’t worry that Preston would be the one to do it, not herself. It wasn’t because Preston thought herself above getting her hands dirty, no. It was because, when it came down to it, Preston had too much heart. He could see it in her eyes.

But all Preston did was talk to Maria for a few minutes. It was all very pleasant, almost as if they had met each other before. They were all smiles and laughs. Nothing about it seemed off or suspicious. And there was no Karl or henchmen in site.

Then Preston got up and walked down the path towards the street. 

Flynn moved to follow her, then stalled. What if Preston was leading him away? He hesitated too long, his decision made for him as Preston disappeared into the crowd.

~~~

Maria and Gabriel had gone home, Flynn watching the house from a stolen car.

He remembered the place from pictures as they never came back to Houston, even after fleeing the war. And his mother rarely talked about Gabriel, but nothing in her memory ever faded about this day. Gabriel was playing on the back porch…

Lucy Preston was walking down the street, heading towards his mother’s house.

Flynn got out of the car and moved to cut her off, all the while keeping an eye out for Karl. The woman seemed to be alone again, and he met up with her at the bottom of the driveway.

She simply smiled at him. “Glad you could join me.”

“What are you doing?” he asked her, feeling far too lost and vulnerable right now. Maybe that was her ultimate play.

“I made a new friend. She invited me over to watch the moon landing with her,” Preston answered a little too casually. 

“That’s my mother,” he replied defensively.

“I’m aware,” her tone was amazingly non-defensive.

In truth, Flynn should have just picked Preston up and thrown her in the car. That would put a stop to whatever she was planning, and also complete the team’s mission statement of Stop Lucy Preston. But something wasn’t right. “How did your father know my mother?”

“Henry Wallace was my father,” Preston said as if she was speaking gospel. “Benjamin Cahill is… DNA.”

“I don’t care if he’s the Queen of Sheba,” Flynn was not going to let himself get distracted, not again. “I found a photo of him, at a party my parents threw at our home in Dubrovnik. Why was he there?”

“To recruit your mother, of course.”

Those words hit Flynn like a red hot knife and he nearly had to step back. “If what you said was true, about Rittenhouse, my mother would have no part in it.”

“While I’m sure that’s true, Rittenhouse can be… very convincing.” Preston was non-judgmental, and a little sad. “Cahill is a pediatrician, you can look him up. Who better to speak to a woman who lost a child than someone who saves them?”

Flynn didn’t want to hear this, something twisting inside him at the thought.

“She wasn’t a full member,” Preston continued, “if that helps to know. She thought she was helping to save the world.”

“By doing what?” the words came out strained. 

“Ask your buddy, Mason.”

Flynn felt like someone hit the brakes hard and then immediately threw them in reverse. “What?”

“To be fair, he probably didn’t put it together because your mother still published her research under Thompkins,” Preston explained. “Now, I’m not an engineer, but Anthony tells me that Maria’s work in understanding fluid dynamics, when applied to the concept of time dilation…” she seemed to suffer some kind of a blue screen event before shaking her head. “I dunno, science. Her work is the reason we have a time machine now, and not in another generation or so.”

This was a lot to take in, but one thought came quickly to the surface and it made him angry and sick at the same time. “Are you going to kill my mother? Stop the time machine from being invented?”

“Oh, no, no,” Preston quickly said, putting her hands on his arms as if to comfort him and he surprised himself by not moving away from her. “I need the Mothership so I can stop Rittenhouse and save my sister.”

Flynn looked down at her and whispered, “Then why are you here?”

A soft, sad smile spread across the woman’s face.

“Lucy?” Maria called from the front door.

“Maria!” Preston called back jovially, turning towards the house. She hooked her arm around Flynn’s and led him up the path. 

Flynn knew he should flee even as he took steps closer to his mother.

“I wasn’t sure you’d be able to make it,” Maria greeted them with a big smile.

“Wasn’t sure ourselves. I do appreciate you inviting us,” Preston was happy and personable. “Our poor television. Of all things for the movers to break, right before this momentous occasion.”

“It’s always the way,” she laughed then looked at Flynn, directly in the eyes, and it took every inch of his willpower not to give away anything. “This must be your fiancée, Hans.”

“It’s the height that gave it away.” Preston leaned her head against him. 

His mother laughed and it was a sound that Flynn sorely missed. He still had no idea what was going on, what Preston was truly up to. But he nodded and politely smiled, following Maria and Lucy into the house. He’d do anything to just keep hearing that laugh.

“Have a seat.” Maria gestured to the sofa as she walked to the kitchen. “I made lemonade.”

“Sounds lovely, thank you,” Preston said as they sat down, the television already on the news cycle about the landing.

“What are you doing?” Flynn whispered at her. 

Preston pointed to the tv. “Watching history being made.”

~~~

“This is old school,” Rufus said as he tapped away at the computers.

“You can fix it though, right?” Wyatt asked as he watched the door. If they couldn’t get NASA’s computers back up and running, then the astronauts wouldn’t be able to return. It would set the US back decades through sheer demoralization alone.

“No.” Rufus shook his head and stood. “No, this is going to take someone smarter than me.”

“Smarter than you?” Wyatt realized they were screwed. “You come from 2016, you’re the smartest person in this building… full of rocket scientists.”

Rufus grinned. “Actually, the smartest person in this building works in the basement.”

~~~

“You’re going to let those men die up there?” Flynn whispered at Lucy when his mother went into the kitchen again.

They had been sitting and watching the news as events unfolded. When Flynn realized what was happening, he could only hope that Wyatt and Rufus were handling it. There was still a chance to save Apollo 11. 

He knew he should be there, helping them, but he couldn’t… he couldn’t leave his mother. The minutes were ticking down. His brother was playing outside. Any moment now his mother was going to have a piece of her heart ripped out and he didn’t want her to be alone. 

“Those men,” Preston was equally quiet, “they knew what they sighed up for. The risks. You should understand that better than I.”

“You think this will stop Rittenhouse?” 

Preston nearly shrugged as she picked up her handbag off the table. “I think it will put a very large kink in their cash flow. Government contracts for research and development are very big business. But that doesn’t answer your question.”

Flynn was pretty sure it did, and he frowned at her.

“You asked why I was here.” Preston looked right into his eyes, that unflinching familiarity in them, and then she smiled.

The woman was up off the sofa like a shot, her handbag falling to the ground but something clearly in her hand. It wasn’t a gun, but he didn’t know what it was and he panicked, jumping up after her. With his long arms, she should have been in easy reach, but he saw where she was going. 

Gabriel had collapsed out on the deck.

“What’s going on?” his mother shouted from the kitchen as Preston opened the door and lorded over the boy.

That’s when Flynn realized what was happening, and his heart seemed to stop because it was too much to think about.

“What are you doing!” Maria came running forward, a murderous glint in her eye as she saw Preston stab her son. 

Flynn knew his mother, knew that she would literally tear Preston’s heart out if she thought the woman had hurt her son. He grabbed Maria and held her back as Preston stood up, showing the needle.

“Epinephrine,” Preston told her. “Your son is allergic to bee stings.”

Maria went slack at this information. “What?”

“He should be okay.” Preston walked back into the house as Flynn let go of his mother. “But you should still call an ambulance.”

“Yes, of course,” Maria nearly mumbled, going to her son and seeing that yes, he was okay. She gathered him up in her arms to bring him inside, her eyes full of tears.

Flynn had no idea what to do next, his world was literally changed in an instant. Would he even be born now? Would Iris? 

Preston was already at the door, letting herself out, and she was the only piece of the puzzle that he had any chance of making sense of. He rushed after Preston, hearing his mother call out a thank you even as she picked up the phone to call for an ambulance. 

“Why did you do that?” Flynn stopped Preston half-way down the driveway. 

“I did it for you,” she answered as if it was obvious. 

“But… why…” 

“You wrote so clearly about your mother.” Preston put her hand on his shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. “About how no matter how happy she seemed to be, there was always this sadness in her eyes. How you would do anything to take that sadness away from her.”

“Stop, just stop,” he growled and it didn’t frighten her. 

But that’s when he noticed Karl, smoking a cigarette and leaning up against a car parked on the road. The hired man stood up straight, hand on his weapon but not pulling it yet. 

“I can’t stop, Flynn,” Preston said with a little sigh. “I’m going to take down Rittenhouse. I’m going to save my sister. And you’re going to help me. This is the least I could do.”

Flynn shook his head. “Is that was this is about? You save my brother and you think I’ll help you burn down history as a thanks?”

“No. You’re going to help me, because you already have.” She smiled at him and the familiarity of it burned. “I told you, we make quite the team.”

Ambulance sirens sounded in the distance, but he barely registered them. Preston looked down the street, then moved away, heading towards Karl.

“This could erase me, you know?” he called after him.

“It won’t,” she said, her back still to him.

“How can you be so sure?”

“You’ve got to start trusting me sometime.”

~~~

When Flynn met up with Wyatt and Rufus, he told them what happened. Well, an abridged version that didn’t make it so obvious that Flynn could have ended this at any given point. He did feel a bit bad about lying to them, especially as they promised to have his back if they returned and no one recognized him because he didn’t exist.

Rufus was pretty sure that is what would happen and Flynn wouldn’t just fade into nothingness. 

Thankfully, and annoyingly, Preston had been right. His mother still took the job, relocating her son with her. Christopher didn’t know much about him, only that he was living in Paris.

Jiya made the off-handed comment that if they kept this up, Flynn would have more family than he knew what to do with come Christmas. And wasn’t that an odd thought that hadn’t really hit him. He’d been alone so long… and now he had a daughter, a brother, and… a housemate to share his life with.

Getting home, Flynn stopped in the entry hall, at the multi-picture frame which caught his eye the first time he stepped foot in the house. Slowly, photos of him and Lorena had started disappearing. Nothing to do with time travel, Lorena was removing them or replacing them with images that didn’t remind her of what she lost. 

The wedding photo had gone from the multi-photo frame, but the one of them on vacation was still there. Only this time, a man twelve years his senior, was in the photo with them. He may have been older, but he was shorter, his face more rounded instead of angled. But there was no doubt they had the same eyes… their mother’s eyes.

“Garcia?” Lorena called his name as he had probably been standing in the hallway for a good ten minutes. He looked at her and her eyes took on a somewhat panicked expression. “Please don’t tell me you’ve forgotten us again.”

“Oh, no, I haven’t,” he quickly assured her. “I remember you, and Iris. I just… don’t remember my brother.”

She took a deep breath and went from panicked to confused. “You don’t remember Gabe?” 

“No…”

Confusion gave way to… about everything imaginable. “The petite woman who had the EpiPen and the tall man who barely spoke. Holy shit.”

“My thoughts exactly,” he replied dryly.

“Why did you do that?” she nearly shouted, anger starting to build in her eyes and to be truthful, it was a welcome change from her usual blank and depressed expressions… even if that anger was directed at him. “You could have erased yourself, and Iris.”

“I know, I know.” Flynn held up his hands to try to calm her. “It… it wasn’t supposed to happen that way. I’ll tell you everything. I would never have risked Iris.”

The anger subsided but there was still an undercurrent of it there. Ultimately, she seemed to believe him, that he wouldn’t have intentionally put Iris in danger. “Yeah, okay, I wanna hear this story.”

“Iris in bed?” he asked.

“Half an hour ago.”

“Okay,” he let out a deep breath, “then let’s go sit down in the living room and I’ll tell you about how I let myself get led around by the nose while my teammates saved the moon landing.”

Lorena blinked, twice. “I’m going to need a bottle of wine.”

“Good call.”


	9. The Outsiders

**The Outsiders**

“What, you never heard of The Outsiders?” Wyatt said as Flynn drove the getaway car with Bonnie and Clyde in the back.

Flynn side-eyed Wyatt to clearly question him. Really? _The Outsiders_? Well, he supposed it was better than _The Lost Boys_.

“This is Darrel Curtis,” Wyatt continued the introductions, giving Flynn the name of Patrick Swayze’s character. Flynn could live with that. “And I’m Dallas Winston.” Effectively making himself Matt Dillon.

This was not how Flynn thought his day was going to go when he got up this morning, but he really should have known better. From the moment that Homeland agent knocked on his apartment door and confirmed he was Garcia Flynn, NSA agent who had a reputation for being a serious history buff, literally nothing was the same anymore. So being the getaway driver to two of the most infamous outlaws in American history was par the course.

“What does Preston want with that key?” Wyatt asked him quietly after they made it to the hideout.

“I’m not sure,” Flynn admitted, idly tipping his hat back onto his head from where it fell into the floorboard earlier. “Either we’ll figure it out, or we ask her when she comes for it.”

“Yeah.” Wyatt nodded as they stepped up the porch of the cabin. “I’m a little worried about Rufus, but he can take care of himself.”

“That he can,” Flynn agreed. 

“Oh hey, next time, let me drive the getaway car.” Wyatt grinned and winked as if sharing a joke Flynn wasn't a party to.

Right, and another thing that Flynn knew he really should get used to: having an insufferably cute partner. With those baby blues of his, Wyatt really should have chosen Rob Lowe.

~~~

Both of them noticed the ring on his finger, but Bonnie was the one who brought it up.

“You have a girl back home, Dallas?” she asked him. 

Wyatt glanced down at his wedding band, still there, a reminder of what he had, of what he lost, and of his guilt for leaving Jessica on the side of the road. But darkness and shame wasn’t what Bonnie wanted to hear about. No, she was in a jovial mood which meant so was Clyde. 

And if these two were dangerous when they were happy, Wyatt sure as hell didn’t want to see how they would get if they crashed from that high.

“Yeah, I got a girl,” Wyatt smiled, focusing on the good memories. “Her name’s Jess.”

Bonnie got a little soft and romantic. “And she’s waiting on you, in Oklahoma?” 

“Yeah, yeah she is.” It hurt, but he smiled and thought of the day where maybe, just maybe, he could change the past and find her waiting for him when he gets off the Lifeboat. A thought that seemed to have morphed over the past few months and left him disorientated. 

Yes, he wanted to save Jess, but would, or should, he go back to her?

“You got to tell me about this Jess.” Bonnie was basically in Clyde’s lap, but she leaned onto the table and he could see the necklace she was wearing which held the key. “How you two meet?”

Wyatt started down this path, and he sure as hell didn’t want to piss off Bonnie by backing out, so he took a breath and told her. About how they went to school together. How he completely messed up the proposal, but she said yes anyway. 

“You miss her so much, don’t you?” Bonnie said as she leaned into Clyde, totally taken in by the story.

“I do.” It was the most honest answer he’d given that night. But it oddly didn’t hurt as much as it used to.

“Well, you’ll get to see her soon, since you boys are heading home.” Bonnie then turned her attention to Flynn. “How about you, tall, dark, and handsome? You got a girl waiting for you?”

“Two, actually,” Flynn said with a bright smile, obviously sensing the same need to keep Bonnie happy. “A wife and a daughter.”

Bonnie practically melted. “You have a daughter?” 

“Seven years old, wants to be a doctor, and a dinosaur, when she grows up.” Flynn chuckled, proud of his little girl. Wyatt couldn’t help but feel happy for the guy, the way his whole demeanor lit up when he talked about Iris.

“I don’t see a ring,” Clyde questioned him, narrowing his eyes. “You not make an honest woman out of your girl?”

“I did,” Flynn looked at his hand which was devoid of a ring because it had disappeared into the time stream. “Went out on one of these trips and, well, it up and vanished on me.”

“Oh, I bet she wasn’t happy,” Bonnie snickered.

“No, she was not,” he replied with an easy laugh. “Got kicked out of the bed for a while.”

Wyatt was a bit amazed at how Flynn was so effortlessly charming, using the truth to lie. Was it something he learned, or was it just natural? Either way, it could be… distracting, useful, but distracting.

“And how’d you meet her?” Bonnie asked as Clyde got up to find another bottle of alcohol. Bonnie ended up sitting on the edge of the chair. “Is she where you’re from?”

“No, she’s American, from Indiana.” Flynn kept the woman’s attention as Wyatt kept an eye on Clyde, just in case the man was seeing through them. “She was a translator.”

“She helped you with your English?” Bonnie assumed, and she just ate it up. “Oh, that is so romantic. They say French is the language of love, but truly, all language can be love if the right words are spoken.”

It was extremely interesting to see this side of the infamous outlaws. Wyatt hadn’t put much thought into them beyond generally knowing they existed. He knew they were dangerous, but this poetic Bonnie wasn’t at all what he expected.

Clyde came back with another bottle of whiskey, topping up their glasses as Bonnie said, “Please tell me your proposal was just as romantic. Did you have it all planned out like Dallas here?”

“No, it ah,” Flynn seemed to stumble on the memory he didn’t have, “it was a little impulsive actually.”

“Oh, I have to hear this,” Bonnie got up just enough for Clyde to sit down and she took her spot on his lap. The key once again reflecting light, catching his eye.

“Well, we’d been together for a bit, and we took a vacation, to a little seaside place,” Flynn started to tell the story and Wyatt noted strange nostalgia in the man’s voice. “The porter thought she was my wife, called her Mrs. Curtis. And that spread to the receptionist and some others. After a few failed attempts to correct everyone, she just… ran with it.” He chuckled and smiled, it was a soft thing that clawed at something inside Wyatt. “She would give anyone who asked the most wildly conflicting versions of how we met and were married. Even using famous stories to see if anyone noticed. No one did.”

“Oh, that is a riot!” Bonnie laughed, slapping her hand on Clyde’s thigh. 

Flynn smiled but there was a sadness there that he tried to hide and failed to do so, from Wyatt at least.

“Anyway,” Flynn continued, “we got back and… I dunno know… being married, it just felt right. So I got down on one knee, asked her if she wanted to be my wife for real. She thought I was never going to ask.”

“That is so sweet.” Bonnie leaned against Clyde. “And you miss her so much. First thing in the morning, you two need to get on your way back home and be with your wives.”

“Cheers to that,” Clyde said as he raised his glass.

“Cheers.” Wyatt raised his to join in the toast, feeling the pain that didn’t seem to cut as deep, and that worried him.

~~~

“Hey, Flynn?” Wyatt said quietly from where he was sitting on the chair, his legs resting on the table. “Do you think they’ll ever go to sleep?”

Flynn let out a very deep sigh, his hat down over his eyes as he stretched across the sofa. “I’m beginning to doubt it.”

“Great,” Wyatt replied wryly.

They were waiting for Bonnie and Clyde to fall asleep, and maybe then they could possibly steal the key and get away. If not, they at least needed to keep a watch for Preston. Flynn had hoped that maybe he could get at least some sleep out of this, trade off shifts with Wyatt. But at the moment, with all the noises coming from the two lovebirds on the other side of the room beyond the curtain… not happening.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Wyatt asked in an almost timid fashion. 

“Yeah, sure.” He tipped his hat up so he could look over at Wyatt. 

“That story, about your… wife, was that true?”

The question shouldn’t have punched him in the gut, but it did. “According to her, yeah, that’s what happened.” 

His answer was met with silence, so Flynn added, “Why?”

“You just seemed...” he trailed off. “I knew this was hard for you, guess I didn’t really feel the scope of it until now.”

“It’s been… difficult,” Flynn admitted with a bit more weight on the word than he felt needed to be there. “Especially on her. But we’re sorting it out, for Iris.”

“That’s good,” he replied softly.

Flynn laid on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling, willing to admit to himself that he was lost. As Wyatt talked about his life with Jessica, proving just how much of an adorable puppy Flynn knew he was, it made Flynn question his feelings for the man. Was he just attracted to an attractive man… or was there something more there?

The way Wyatt would smirk and call him sir, it just ripped through walls inside of him. Walls that had been up for longer than Flynn wanted to admit. Walls that Lorena knocked down in his other life.

“You think Rufus was right?” Flynn found himself asking.

“About what?”

“Another version of me fell in love with Lorena,” he said very quietly, and not because he was worried about the two outlaws across the room overhearing him. “Maybe I should put in the effort to try to make things work.”

Wyatt paused, shuffling in his chair. “If this is about the story, you can’t let yourself be taken in by nostalgia… nostalgia by proxy even.”

“It’s not that.” Was it? There were very few things Flynn was sure about these days. “The other night, we sat down and talked and... and it was nice.”

“Nice?”

“It started with her telling me about my brother.” Which was a whole other situation he didn’t know how to deal with yet. “And it just kind of spiraled away and we just... talked... and it was nice.”

It was comfortable, it was easy, but was it anything more than that?

“Look, there is no such thing as fate,” Wyatt was adamant about this. Because if fate did exist, then that meant Jessica was meant to die and Wyatt was helpless to prevent it, and even more helpless to change it. “Past you called her ‘my luck’ and that’s what it was, luck. You said so yourself, you aren’t the same person you were a decade ago, and as for the people you are today, there is way too much baggage there.”

Flynn continued to stare up at the ceiling, mulling over Wyatt’s words. The man was right, there was all kinds of baggage they would have to work through. “But it would be worth it though, to be able to be with someone, share a life and be happy?”

“Take it from someone who lost the love of their life,” Wyatt turned strangely neutral. “You need to let her mourn and move on from losing past-you. She needs to take that path herself, you can’t go inviting yourself along. If it’s meant to be, then she’ll find her way back to you.”

“Move on? Like you moved on from Jessica?” It was a low blow and Flynn didn’t even know why he made the punch. He was just frustrated, feeling a bit lost and alone. 

“You’d be surprised,” Wyatt said quietly.

Flynn glanced over at him, but he was staring out the window, looking introspective. 

That’s the last words they spoke to each other that night.

~~~

They were putting their period clothing on the rack so it could be properly washed and pressed should they need to use it again. They were now back in their regular clothing. Wyatt in a t-shirt and jeans, Flynn in trousers and a short-sleeved turtleneck.

Wyatt didn’t know they even made short-sleeved turtlenecks.

“Hey, Flynn,” Wyatt called out to him as the man turned to leave. “About that conversation we had, last night…”

“Yeah?” Flynn licked his lips, a seemingly unconscious thing that Wyatt kept noticing.

“I didn’t mean you shouldn’t look for happiness,” he found the words heavy. 

“I know.” Flynn nodded, looking down and away. 

Wyatt felt something tighten in his chest, but for the life of him, he couldn’t put a name to it. He simply tried to ignore it, as he always did. He felt a bit of déjà vu from locking down emotions he didn’t even look at first. 

It was… habit. It was safe.

“Let Lorena grieve and move on,” Wyatt told Flynn. “There’s no point in trying to make things work until she’s done that.”

“Speaking from experience?” The question was too honest to be a jib.

There wasn’t a good answer here for Wyatt. He didn’t want to believe he moved on, he wanted to believe he would save Jess and they would get a chance to try again. He’d be a better husband this time. 

But faced with the question, with reality, Wyatt had to admit, “For the longest time, I couldn’t think of myself even looking at someone else, let alone loving anyone not Jess. I thought I would be betraying her.”

Flynn met his eyes, dark and intense, as always.

“Today,” Wyatt had to look away. “I miss her, but I… I could find love again, if it presented itself. She’d want that for me, even though I don’t really deserve it.”

There was a quiet that passed between them, one that was thick and suffocating. Wyatt glanced up at Flynn and nearly drowned in the intensity of the man’s gaze, and he found himself strangely okay with the idea of getting lost in that abyss. Although him being okay with the idea was, itself, not okay.

“Anyway,” Wyatt cleared his throat, “everyone moves at a difference pace. It could take her months or years to get over losing her Flynn. You just need to live your life, and let her live her own.”

“And if it’s meant to be… it’s meant to be?” Flynn asked, repeating Wyatt’s own words.

“Actually, I should have said… if it happens, it happens.” Wyatt shrugged and felt the need to take a deep breath. “Love just… happens.”

He was starting to sound like a sap, where the hell had that all come from?

Flynn looked away, thought for a second, then nodded. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right.”

“I have my moments,” Wyatt tried to lighten the air.

“That you do, _sir_.” Flynn tried to maintain a straight face and failed.

“That’s Master Sergeant to you, _sir_.” Wyatt laughed.

Flynn laid his hand on his chest and slightly bowed his head. “My mistake, _Master Sergeant_ Logan.”

Wyatt continued to laugh, surprised at himself for doing so. He hadn’t really just… let go, in a long time. He looked at Flynn and all sorts of crazy notions and ideas got into his head. Damn, how much had he had to drink? What kind of illegal moonshine did Clyde feed them?

“You want to get a beer?” Wyatt asked and then nearly choked. He sounded like he was asking Flynn out for coffee which was a whole different thing than two friends getting a beer.

Maybe he was suffering from alcohol poisoning? He wasn’t sure of the symptoms but surely it affected higher brain functions.

“No, I got to get back.” Flynn looked at his watch. “If I leave now, I can tuck Iris into bed.”

“Alright, then I’ll see you next time Preston jumps.” He tried not to feel disappointed.

~~~

Flynn walked into the house he shared with Lorena and set the alarm. He glanced over at the multi-frame photo album on the wall and saw the pictures had changed again. Gone now was anything that showed him and Lorena in any kind of romantic or loving setting. Instead it was mostly Iris through the various stages of her life.

The vacation picture of them and Gabriel was still there. 

According to Lorena, he and his brother were close, but not super close. They didn’t call each other all the time or anything. Though mostly that was because Flynn would be gone on NSA missions and Gabriel had his own company to run. But they were brothers, they loved each other, and Gabriel was Best Man at their wedding. (Before the second time change, it had been Stiv.)

Flynn doubted Christopher would allow another civilian in on the time travel secret, so he was already trying to figure out how to handle meeting his brother for the first time.

“Tata!” Iris called out and all thoughts turned to his daughter. 

The girl didn’t want to go to bed, so Flynn picked her up and turned her into an airplane which made a safe landing on the runway, aka her bed. After reading her a chapter or two out of the Percy Jackson book they were working through, Iris fell asleep. 

He tucked her in and kissed her on her forehead. In that moment, Iris was the only thing that made sense, that was solid. He loved her and would give her the world if she so asked.

Walking out of the room, Flynn might as well be entering a sand storm in the middle of the Sahara. 

Wyatt had been right, he couldn’t try to start something with Lorena simply because he thought that was the way it was supposed to be. That ship sailed, and it may never come back to port. 

And then there was Wyatt himself, a boat that had already sank.

There had been a moment, when they were talking, where Flynn thought maybe Wyatt wasn’t as straight as he claimed to be. That maybe there was a chance the Texan reciprocated the feelings of attraction. But Flynn realized it was likely a product of Wyatt having to talk about Jess as if she was alive still. Wyatt was emotionally vulnerable and everything was a bit of a mess.

Not that Flynn’s own emotions weren’t also something of a mess.

His life had been so much simpler before 1937, lonelier, but simpler. He wouldn’t go back though, not if it meant losing Iris. She may never have meant to have happened, but like hell would he give her up. He’d just have to figure the rest out like a functional adult, or a close proximity thereof.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm an Okie, so I had to get in a reference. XD  
> Thanks for reading! <3


	10. Loss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! <3

**Loss**

“I need your help.”

Wyatt had his gun pointed straight at Preston. Karl had his aimed at Wyatt. Flynn had been caught off guard, his hand floating near his weapon. Rufus was wisely staying out of the line of fire. Preston had her hands up in a placating gesture.

“Shoot me, and Washington dies,” Preston told him. “I have a man in the other room with him.”

“You’d kill Washington?” Flynn sounded like he couldn’t comprehend this. “You?”

“I don’t want to, but I will,” there was a sternness in her voice, that of someone who feels trapped. It’s a dangerous emotion.

Wyatt glanced over at Flynn who nodded, relaxing his posture. Well, they could always get into a shootout later. Wyatt slowly lowered and holstered his gun. Karl followed suit once he was sure Wyatt wasn’t about to do a quick re-draw. To be fair, Wyatt had considered it.

Then Washington came in, Preston seemed to float somewhere between the fangirling historian she once was and the defiant time terrorist she became. She smiled at the soon-to-be-President and looked about three words short of asking for his autograph, even as she told a very convincing lie about them all being spies. 

After Washington left, Preston had a simple request: help her get to Benedict Arnold so they could use him to get to Rittenhouse.

“And why would we do that?” Wyatt asked, for some reason being the one in charge right now. Usually that was Flynn’s job in these situations. 

Wyatt was tactical, when the shooting started, that’s when leadership was deferred onto him. When it involved tech or the Lifeboat, Rufus talked, they listened. But when it came down to the historical aspects, the decision making fell to Flynn. He would piece things together, he had the instinct to know what to do and how to deal with Preston’s schemes. 

Right now… Flynn was strangely silent.

“Surely you understand the threat that Rittenhouse poses.” Preston looked at Wyatt with those same determined eyes she wore when she had him tied to the chair. “We’re on the same side.”

“Guys,” Rufus warned, “we shouldn’t be talking about this.”

“Because of the recorder in your pocket?” Preston asked simply.

Rufus blinked. “How did you know?” 

“I know, because he told me.” Preston looked directly at Flynn as she pulled the journal from her bag. “It’s all here.”

“I didn’t write that,” Flynn told her but the bite seemed to have gone out of his voice.

“You didn’t have a family either,” she replied softly. “Are they everything you could have hoped for?”

There was a familiarity between Flynn and Preston, Wyatt could finally see it clearly. Some kind of strange connection. It was if she was waiting for the light bulb to go off and Flynn to shout, ‘I understand now!’ But Flynn remained confused and enthralled by the small book bearing his name, and whatever secrets it held.

“I am going after the founders of Rittenhouse,” Preston told him firmly. “I would rather you helped me do this and not fight me.”

“You think you can stop Rittenhouse?” Flynn asked quietly, Wyatt starting to get worried about the control Preston had over Flynn. And a little jealous? Wait, that can’t be right.

“Yes, I can end this,” Preston at least believed she could from the way she spoke. “And once it’s over, I will give myself up and return the Mothership.”

That got Wyatt back on track. “You what?”

“I’ll turn myself in,” she promised. “Once I’ve done what I’ve set out to do, I won’t need a time machine anymore.”

Rufus asked the important question, “What about him?”

“A deal’s a deal.” Karl shrugged, a low smile on his lips. “Let’s just say when we’re done here, I’m retiring.”

So Preston will give herself up and her number one lieutenant is going to retire to a non-extraditing country with a shit ton of money likely gained through time travel. It wasn’t… a bad outcome. They would stop the whole ‘trying to burn down history’ thing, get the time machine back, and they could always go black ops on Karl later if so inclined.

But still… Preston was their mission.

“Here,” Preston held the journal towards Flynn. “If you still don’t believe me when I say how truly horrible Rittenhouse is, then maybe you’ll believe your own words.”

Slowly, cautiously, Flynn took the journal from her. He held it in his hands as if it was unstable nitroglycerin. But there was no doubt in Wyatt’s mind that Flynn was going to side with Preston. Whatever connection these two had, the journal only strengthen it. 

“We’re not really considering working with Preston?” Wyatt asked Flynn, but it was Rufus who answered.

“Rittenhouse threatened my family,” the man reminded him. 

Karl let out a short, annoyed breath. “Told you the toy solider would need convincing.”

Preston gave Karl the disappointed professor look, but then set her eyes on Wyatt. “Let me make this worth your wild then. Help me, and I’ll tell you who murdered your wife.”

The floor dropped out from under Wyatt and his body went cold. “How could you know that?”

“Money,” Karl answered. “I’m sure the local cops did their best, but if you want answers, you got to be willing to talk to the right people, or the wrong people, however you want to look at it.”

There was an unfortunate logic to his words, and apparently it was all Wyatt needed to hear.

~~~

“You shot Cornwallis!” both Flynn and Preston shouted at Karl.

The man just shrugged like a thank you would have been nice.

“He’s supposed to negotiate a treaty with Napoleon,” Preston was clearly not happy with the turn of events.

Flynn watched as she scolded Karl who took it in stride. Preston still loved history, and, in many ways, wanted to protect it. But sometimes, in order to save a patient, the doctor has to cut out diseased tissues or sever a limb. 

So much damage had already been done to history… how much more could it take?

~~~

Rittenhouse… was a person? An actual… person.

“Why didn’t you tell me this?” Flynn asked her and she barely heard him.

“It wasn’t in the journal,” she answered quietly. Yet another piece of useful information that never made it into the journal, never made it into her hands. This could have changed everything…

But also… why didn’t her mother or Cahill say anything? They told her that Rittenhouse was her destiny, that she was a part of a group that was going to save the world… by bending it under foot. Why would they not mention the man who started it all?

Was it oversight on their part, a fact that didn’t matter in the long run? 

Or was there something they were trying to hide? And if so… how horrible of a secret must it be for them to keep it?

~~~

Rufus, Karl, and Benedict Arnold went off into the forest to take a piss. Wyatt was sure there was a joke in there somewhere.

“The horses need water,” Flynn said from the front where he was checking on the animals. “I’ll be right back.”

Wyatt gave him a nod, he would stay and keep an eye on Preston. Not that Preston was much of a physical threat or a flight risk… but she was crafty and not to be underestimated.

“Growing up, he wanted to be a cowboy,” Preston said after Flynn left to walk down to the creek.

“What?” Wyatt asked, caught off guard by the random comment.

“Just something he mentioned, in the journal.” She shrugged and looked away. “Did he tell you that his wife grew up in the country? Barrel raced and everything. I am willing to bet that’s what connected them at first.”

Wyatt listened to her talk and that strange sense of jealously clawed at him. But he honestly didn’t know where it was directed at. Lorena? Preston? Maybe both…. which was ridiculous… why would he be jealous of their relationships with Flynn? Worried, perhaps, by Preston’s influence over his friend.

“Look,” Wyatt had had enough of… well… everything. “All I care about is ending this, so we can go back to living our lives.”

“As a drunk with barely the will to live?” her words were too neutral and full of truth to be scathing.

Anger boiled up inside him anyway. “Flynn write that in his little journal?” 

“I have eyes, Wyatt,” she told him softly. She was always soft even when she was sharp, and that made her even more dangerous. “I can see the same pain inside of you, the guilt of letting down someone we love. I know you, perhaps better than you know yourself.”

“You don’t know me at all,” he snapped back angerly, rebelling against the fact that she wasn’t wrong about him. “How could you?”

Preston nodded and acquiesced. “Fair enough.”

Flynn came back, bucket full of water, and let the horses drink. He looked up at Wyatt and Preston, glancing between them. An odd look crossed his face, something akin to confusion. But his attention went back to the horses, stroking them softly to let them know they were cared for.

It was… endearing... 

The other men returned and the thought flitted away as quickly as it had formed. That was happening a lot lately, Wyatt noted. Feelings he didn’t want to name appeared and seemed to be directed towards Flynn. Of course, if he didn’t name them, he didn’t have to deal with them.

Preston was right about Wyatt, about the pain and the guilt. But she was also wrong. She said he barely had the will to live. While that had been true for some time after Jess died… it wasn’t any more. He was starting to feel alive again and that frightened him… because he had no idea what changed.

~~~

Wrong, wrong, everything had gone wrong.

Flynn was on his knees, surrounded by men ready to kill him at a moment’s notice. Wyatt was beside him, in the same precarious position. Preston was struggling against a man who held her. And David Rittenhouse... he had Flynn’s gun, empty now, but no doubt he could reverse engineer it.

But how could this be? How could he go back in time and give Preston the journal if he died here? 

He didn’t want to believe in destiny, that things were meant to be. But he did end up helping Preston, just as she said she would. But this isn’t quite the team she promised him. Nor was this the outcome he would have suspected.

If he died here, before going back and giving Preston the journal, would that mean she never would have stolen the Mothership? And he never would have followed? And his daughter would never have been born?

This can’t be it... this can’t be how it ends.

There was a crash, and then chaos.

Rufus, who they had to leave behind because of these un-enlightened times, came to the rescue. Karl was there too, but his presence was an afterthought. 

Flynn’s first thought: fight.

He and Wyatt both went into attack, jumping up and taking out the closest men. Preston was able to break free of her captor whose attention was now elsewhere. Karl let off one shot and took the man down, only to get grazed in the shoulder himself, his gun falling to the ground.

Flynn ended up with his back to Wyatt as they fought, a complete trust there. He knew he didn’t have to worry about what was behind him, Wyatt would take care of that. Just as Wyatt knew Flynn would protect him as well. 

There was kicking and there was punching, but the other men really didn’t have a chance. Not against two healthy adult males with special military training. 

All that was left was David Rittenhouse. 

Grabbing a flintlock pistol dropped by a man who hadn’t the chance to use it... Flynn shot Rittenhouse in the heart. He slumped and fell to the ground, not quite the imposing figure he once was.

“So... it’s over?” Rufus asked once things became silent.

“Yeah...” Flynn was a little dumbstruck, “I guess it is.”

It didn’t make sense, it still didn’t fit the picture Preston had painted. But maybe that was the point? They stopped Rittenhouse and that... was that... 

“Where’s John?” Preston asked.

They glanced around the room, there weren’t many places to hide, not since they kind of destroyed most of the furniture. “He’s gone.”

Preston spoke so lowly he barely heard her. “The successor is often more cruel than the father...”

Flynn could think of several instances in history where that was true, and for some daft reason Nero came to mind first. He turned to ask her what she meant by bringing this up, a sinking feeling in his stomach. But Preston was gone, just barely the glimpse of her burgundy cape disappearing into the hallway.

And so was Karl’s gun... no longer laying where the man had dropped it.

“She’s going after the kid,” Flynn told them.

“The kid?” Wyatt said, eyes wide and suitably horrified.

“I did not sign up for that.” Rufus was shaking his head.

“I did.” Karl had a scarf around his arm, stopping the bleeding, more than ready to keep on fighting.

It was two against one, but someone needed to go after Preston and stop her before she ended up doing something she could never come back from. Flynn glanced over at Wyatt, and the plan was clear. They both knew what to do.

~~~

Lucy was possessed. She knew it, as well as she could feel the cold steel in her hands, but she couldn’t stop it. Rittenhouse had to end… and it stopped with John.

There was yelp and snap of twigs. Lucy rushed towards the sound to see John getting up from a fall. He saw her and tried to run only to become cornered against some fallen tree trunks. He was scared, he was frightened, and he was an open target.

Raising the gun, she remembered what Karl had told her, just aim for the chest if she had to shoot someone. It’s pretty hard to miss center mass, and she was bound to hit something vital.

The gun pointed at the child, Lucy was frozen between action and inaction. A seemingly rational part of her mind told her that she had to do this, it was the only way to save countless others… to save her sister. One life to save potentially millions. The life of a child, who was crying and shuddering, snot streaming from a nose he was too terrified to wipe.

A soft breeze drew attention to her own tears drying cold on her cheeks.

“Preston,” Flynn yelled and it startled her. He ran between her and the boy, blocking her shot.

“Move,” she said forcefully, pointing the gun up at him.

“Don’t do this,” Flynn pleaded. “He’s only a child.”

“A child who believes what his father believes,” she shouted as if trying to convince more than just Flynn she was doing the right thing. “Rittenhouse, all of it, needs to die tonight.”

“Not like this,” his voice was soft, his hands open and spread wide. “You said you didn’t want to be a part of Rittenhouse.”

Anger welled inside of her and she pointed the weapon squarely at his chest. “I am _not_ Rittenhouse!”

“You do this, you murder a child… that will make you no better than them.”

“They took everything from me.” The tears were free flowing as pain washed over her anew. “I’m a history professor because _they_ wanted me to be one. I wanted to join a band.” Somehow a laugh escaped her. “And my parents? They were _matched_ … like some Nazi eugenics program.”

The gun was too heavy now, her body trembling and cold. She could barely see by the tears that flooded her vision. 

“I want this nightmare to end,” she managed to choke out as she lowered her weapon and stared blankly into the ground. “I want my sister back.”

When had Flynn gotten so close? His presence towered over her, but it wasn’t threatening. He reached out and gently laid his hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Lucy…”

He called her by her first name… he hadn’t done that since—

“Your sister wouldn’t want this for you.” 

Something sat up and screamed inside of her. Lucy got her sister killed because she didn’t have the guts to do what needed to be done. She had been a coward. She had failed the most important person in her life. 

“But she’d be alive,” Lucy said coldly, something in her snapping. 

Stepping around Flynn before he had a chance to realize what was happening, she raised the gun with determination.

John was gone.

~~~

“No!” Preston screamed when she saw that the boy had gotten away.

“Lucy,” he said her first name again, not even realizing he was doing it.

“You’ve ruined everything,” she nearly screamed at him. “You were supposed to _help_ me.”

“I will help you,” he made that promise despite the fact it went against his team’s mission statement and a direct violation of his orders. “If this doesn’t stop Rittenhouse then we can figure out a better way.” One that didn’t involve murdering children.

Preston stared up at him with anger and betrayal so vivid it cut through him and made him bleed. It tore at something inside of him. What did this Lucy Preston mean to him? Or more importantly, what did he mean to her? She gave him his brother back, and all she wanted was her sister.

There just wasn’t words. 

Preston blinked, looked straight forward at his chest, then back up at him again. This time her expression was blank. 

“You know what, Garcia, maybe I have been going at this all wrong.”

Flynn heard the whistle of wind right before something solid hit him in the back of the head. Then it all went dark.

~~~

Wyatt took on Karl as Flynn fled after Preston. Then more of Rittenhouse’s men showed up and the whole thing delved back into chaos. Wyatt and Rufus got away, but so did Karl.

“I’m telling you, this way,” Rufus said and Wyatt kept following him. 

They had no idea where Flynn or Preston went, but Rufus swore he saw a flash of light that could have been the Mothership landing. If Preston had sent instructions back to Anthony about where they were going, she could metaphorically have a get-away car waiting. 

As they got closer, they could see the light and hear the hum of the Mothership. It sat in a small clearing, the door open, Karl standing down on the ground, helping to… 

Helping to push an unconscious Flynn into the Mothership as another of Preston’s men had his arms under Flynn’s, pulling him in. Shit. Flynn was being kidnapped.

The second man saw them and said something. Karl turned and pulled out a fresh gun and started to fire at them. They ducked behind some fallen tree trunks that splintered from the bullets impacting. Wyatt had managed to retrieve his and Flynn’s guns, but they were empty. There was no way to get to the Mothership… to get to Flynn.

When the shooting stopped, Wyatt glanced around to see the door had shut, the rings beginning to spin. 

It was too late, Preston now had Flynn.

There was about a thousand things to consider in that moment. A cover story to tell Agent Christopher for starters. But in that moment, as the time machine disappeared in a puff of air… Wyatt became consumed with one:

He’d loss Jess… he wasn’t losing Flynn.


	11. Crisp Fall Night

**Crisp Fall Night**

“How long until it’s recharged?”

Jiya typed at the keyboard. “Four hours.”

Great, just great. Preston had Flynn which… probably wasn’t bad? After all, Flynn was a highly skilled combatant who had held his own against Preston’s men on more than one occasion. And Preston had no desire to kill him, she needed him, if he does indeed give her the journal in the future. So… he was probably okay.

So why couldn’t Wyatt shake off the horrible twisting in his gut? Why did it feel like this was Jess all over again? Why was he so distraught over losing Flynn?

“Hey, man.” Rufus stopped Wyatt in the locker room. “It’s going to be okay.”

Wyatt ignored him and went to change, getting ready to go back out again. He was going to get Flynn back… he had to…

~~~

“It just won Blue Ribbon at the fair,” the waitress said, placing their drinks on the table.

Lucy smiled at the woman, a little tinge of a laugh in her eyes at the comment. Flynn knew this because he was watching her, studying her, trying to understand what this woman meant to him. 

She had sent Karl away, so Flynn could have easily just stood up and walked out, she couldn’t have stopped him. And considering what age they were in, he could unfortunately drag Lucy out of the pub and no one would have batted an eye. But Lucy knew he would do neither of these things.

She knew him far too well.

“What are we doing here?” he finally asked.

Lucy smirked. “We’re not going to burn down the world’s first Ferris Wheel if that’s what you’re asking.”

“You know what I meant,” he replied dryly, a tad annoyed that it was just the kind of sarcastic answer he would have given her if their roles were switched. “Killing David Rittenhouse didn’t fix anything. If your mission is to continue the status quo of burning down history, then why bring me along.”

“Why not bring you along?” she asked as if it was already a done thing.

“I will find a way to stop you,” he answered her clearly.

Lucy didn’t even flinch. “Are you sure of that?”

Flynn was startled into silence. What did Lucy know that he didn’t? Sure, Rittenhouse was awful and needed to be stopped, but this wasn’t the way to go about it. Of course, he didn’t really know how to go about it, yet, but he’d come up with something if he just had five seconds to think. 

“Hey, professor.” Karl returned to the table. 

“How did it go?” she asked him.

“Took the bait like you said they would,” he seemed a tad bit pleased with himself. “Followed me from Roosevelt all the way to the trap.”

“Trap?” Flynn had to keep himself from shouting the word.

“We knew your friends would come after you when the Mothership jumped,” Lucy explained in that way only teachers could do. “We can’t let them interfere, so we led them into a trap. Now, this does not mean they are any way hurt, yet. You still have time to get to them.”

Flynn blinked, unsure what she was trying to say. “You’re letting me go?”

“I will, once we’ve finished what we’re here to do.”

“And that is?” A sense of urgency barreled its way through his chest. He knew Wyatt and Rufus had gotten out of 1780, he learned it before Lucy dragged him to 1893. Of course his teammates would come after him, after the Mothership at least, when it jumped. 

Rufus was his friend, turning into something of a little brother. And Wyatt… hell, it was quite possible he was in love with the man. It was a stupid, pointless love that would never be returned to him, but it was there nevertheless. Like hell was he going to let either of them die… not for him.

“There are a lot of people at this fair,” Lucy continued conversationally. “Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, JP Morgan… I believe you refer to them and their type as… some of History’s Greatest Dicks.”

Well, it was true.

“I was ther,e remember?” she added, and he frowned. “I was at the symposium. I’m sure you didn’t see me, I blend pretty easily into a crowd. You… not so much.”

Of course, the symposium at Columbia University, in early 2014. Flynn happened to be in town, on NSA business, but found time to go and listen to some of the lectures. He had noted that Lucy and Carol Preston had one over the history of San Francisco and the Tong Wars. He considered going, but it conflicted with a discussion of Antun Lučić.

Antun was a Croatian immigrant, a brilliant engineer who revolutionized the oil industry, but good luck finding anyone who knew his name. 

Flynn found himself in a very heated debate in the lobby of the lecture hall. So-called scholars were trying to minimize Antun’s work, and Tesla’s, and several other immigrants, in favor of the likes of Edison and Rockefeller. The rant made it all the way back to his superiors who hadn’t realized Flynn’s love of history ran so deep. But it was noted, and it was what led him to the Time Team.

It’s what ultimately led him to Lucy… but she had already been there, had listened to him, and remembered.

“Rittenhouse needs to be stopped.” Lucy gained back her steely composure. “I’ve been telling you this, but I can’t seem to get that point across to you. So, I believe a more hands on approach is required.”

“A more hands on approach?”

“Yes. You are going to help take out Edison, Ford, and Morgan,” she said matter of fact. “And the sooner you do, the sooner I’ll tell you where your friends are so you can save them.”

Flynn cleared his throat. This was the kind of situation he had trained for in the NSA, though time travel and altering the course of history wasn’t exactly covered. “How do you suppose we do this?”

Lucy smiled. “They’re having a meeting, Karl brought C4, it’s a simple enough equation.”

“You want me to place a bomb.” Flynn ran all the possibilities through his head. As much as he hated those men, he couldn’t let them die because it would alter history too much. But he could play along for the time being. “Like you say, simple enough.”

“Well, not _so_ simple,” she stopped him. “The room they’ll be meeting in is heavily secured. I’m not actually sure how you’re going to get into it.”

Oh, Lucy was sure, Flynn could tell by the look in her eyes. She already had a plan and was waiting to see if he would come up with the same. It was a useful psychological tactic, to build a kind of kindship born of mutual understanding. He had used it plenty times before on assets. 

“Houdini,” he said and she smiled.

~~~

“Hey, buddy, it’s me,” he heard Rufus say as he opened his eyes, fight instincts already kicking in.

“What happened?” Wyatt asked as he rubbed his head, clearing out the cobwebs of whatever gas was used on him.

“The short of it?” Rufus helped him to stand. “We’re trapped in an airtight room with these two, and we’re quickly running out of air.”

“Break it to me gently why don’t you?” Wyatt frowned as he glanced around. Sure enough, they were in a small brick room with a man, a woman, and what looked to be a locked heavy door. 

Great... just great.

~~~

For an NSA agent kidnapping time bandit... Lucy Preston fangirled a lot.

It was something Flynn had noticed since Robert Lincoln. It was like she would forget, just for a moment, all the pain and suffering that was driving her. When Houdini asked for a volunteer, she eagerly raised her hand. Now she was grinning, eyes almost sparkling, as she experienced a Harry Houdini magic trick up close. 

“She always like this?” Flynn asked to Karl who was sitting behind them, gun in easy reach.

“You have no idea,” he answered wryly. 

Half an hour later, he was walking down a hallway to the meeting room, Houdini by his side. 

“Really sorry about this,” he told the legend.

“Wouldn’t be the first time men have been waylaid by a beautiful woman,” he replied, taking the situation seemingly well. More resigned than anything, really. 

“It wasn’t her beauty,” though he couldn’t deny that Lucy was, indeed, beautiful. “She has my friends in a trap. If I don’t do as she says, she won’t tell me where they are.”

“What kind of trap?” Houdini asked as they got to the door.

“I don’t know,” Flynn admitted. “It doesn’t matter what kind of trap they are in if I can’t find them.”

“Of course it does,” Houdini laughed, examining the lock. “Traps come in all shapes and sizes. Some have locks, some have knives, some are simply an illusion. There is no point in finding your friends if you don’t know what kind of trap they are in.”

Flynn thought about this for a moment… traps of all shapes and sizes. “Son of a bitch.”

“Pardon?”

“I know where they are.” Flynn realized. If they followed Karl to the hotel, then got trapped in there, it could be days before H.H. Holmes finished them off. It was the perfect plan, simple and efficient. 

“Do you want to go save them?” Houdini asked, pointing at the door. “Because I already figured out how to get into the room, so I just need to know what I’m doing here.”

~~~

“Edison and Ford have arrived,” Lucy mumbled to herself as she stood in the alley. What was taking Flynn so long? He should be back by now.

_Thunk!_

Lucy turned to see Karl go down, knocked on the back of the head with a piece of wood by Flynn. 

“Wyatt, Rufus,” Lucy said quickly, “are you just going to let them die?”

“Of course not.” Flynn grabbed Karl’s gun. “They’re at the Murder Castle, am I wrong?”

Lucy tried not to reveal the truth, but she couldn’t quite school her emotions well enough. 

“Now listen, Lucy,” Flynn was right up at her. “I’m going to let you go because I can’t drag you through that hell-hole _and_ save my team. I also have no doubt you’d escape if I left you here tied up.”

“You’ve made your choice, that is clear.” She would not let herself be intimidated by him.

“You’re not a bad person, Lucy.” His eyes softened. “A little lost perhaps, in a lot of pain, but you don’t have to let that control you.”

“It doesn’t control me,” she bit back. “I never let myself be out of situations I can’t control.”

Flynn frowned and it made her want to cry. “I’m sorry you believe that.”

“Come on,” Houdini put his hand on Flynn’s shoulder, “we need to go before this guy wakes up.”

Knowing Houdini was right, Flynn pulled back and headed down the alley with only a cursory glance behind him. Lucy watched him go, knowing full well she had lost control a long time ago.

~~~

“Help!” Wyatt shouted, his voice hoarse from both the screaming and the lowered amount of oxygen in the room.

He was a soldier, he had come close to death several times, but suffocation in a hotel basement in 1893 was quite low on his list of ways he figured he would go. For a time, after Jessica died, there might have been a moment or two where he wouldn’t have cared so much, fought so hard. 

“Wyatt?” a familiar voice called back.

“FLYNN!” Wyatt nearly screamed with relief, Rufus shouting the name beside him.

“Wyatt!” Flynn is closer now, just outside the door. “I’m here. I brought Harry Houdini with me.”

“Did Flynn just say Harry Houdini?” Rufus asked and Wyatt had wondered if he had heard that right.

The door opened, a rush of air blew into the room and a sense of relief washed over him. 

“Man, am I glad to see you,” Rufus said, moving forward to grasp Flynn’s arm at the elbow, pulling him to half-hug him with his other arm. 

“I need to hear that more often,” Flynn joked, hugging the man back. 

“Cutting it close, _sir_ ,” Wyatt teased, also going in for a half-hug. 

Flynn gripped his arm, pulling Wyatt in to wrap his other arm around him. It was the same relieved gesture that passed between Flynn and Rufus, but something felt… different. The way Flynn’s grip was so tight, as if he was afraid to let go. The way Wyatt tucked so neatly against the man’s tall frame. Like Wyatt could just bury his head against him, breathe him in, and let his fears and tension fade away. 

The moment lingered longer than it should have, but passed so quickly, Wyatt wasn’t even sure what happened.

“Hey, Flynn,” Rufus said, oblivious to the situation. “This is Sophia Hayden,” he started to introduce the others in the room.

“Thank you, sir,” she said gratefully, accepting a proper handshake. 

“And this is—” 

“H.H. Holmes,” Flynn said the moment his eyes set on their cellmate.

“H.H. Holmes?” Rufus asked.

“America’s first serial killer,” Flynn said, his whole body doing that thing where it tenses, senses heightened, ready for a fight. 

“What’s a serial killer?” Houdini asked, peeking around Flynn’s shoulder.

“He built this hotel to that he could capture and torture people,” Flynn explained. “ _Many_ people.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Holmes defended himself.

Wyatt frowned, noticing the changes to Holmes’ body language, seeing the slight trembles of anxiety that he had been caught out. “Why would he trap himself in here with us?”

“To watch you suffer,” Flynn said coldly, then with unfathomable gentleness, led Sophia out of the room, moving her into the hallway. “You should go, get far away from here, Miss.”

“Come on, Rufus.” Wyatt grabbed the pilot by the arm, joining Flynn and Houdini in the hallway. Then, before Holmes could react, Wyatt shut and locked the door.

“Is that man really a … serial killer?” Houdini asked. 

“One of the worst,” Flynn confirmed in a gravelly tone.

“What happens to him?” Rufus asked.

“Profits from his murders, lies about everything.” Flynn shakes his head. “Basically gets away with it, considering all he’s done.”

“How can you know that?” Houdini was taking this all in stride, almost sounding analytical about it.

“A good magician never reveals his secrets.” Flynn smiled and winked at Houdini, it was an almost teasing gesture. Wait, did Flynn have the hots for Houdini? And why did that make Wyatt a tad bit jealous?

~~~

“You left him in there to die?” Jiya asked Rufus as they stood on the control deck.

“Sorta.” Wyatt shrugged. “You know, it took… some time… to get the police to the hotel.”

“We had to make sure we weren’t going to be jumped again,” Flynn pointed out.

“I’m not hearing any of this.” Denise shook her head. “But it’s good to have you back, Flynn.”

“Thank you,” he replied with relief. “It’s good to be back.”

The men headed down to the locker room to shower and change out of their period clothes. They all decided they were going out for beers again. After all, it’s not every day they meet Houdini and take out a serial killer. There was also the unspoken ‘so glad to have gotten Flynn back safe and sound.’

“I forgot my wallet, I’ll catch up,” Wyatt headed back to the lockers. His head didn’t seem to be screwed on correctly at the moment.

He just couldn’t get that smell out of his head.

Wyatt wouldn’t admit to himself at the time, but Flynn… Flynn smelt good. It was like all those Crisp Fall Night and MidSummer’s Night candles Jess would bring home from Yankee Candle. Dark and musky. He could wrap himself in it and happily drown. 

But… it was Flynn. Wyatt shouldn’t be having these thoughts about a man… any… man. He shouldn’t be thinking about Flynn’s barely contained coiled strength. The way he went from predator when faced with Holmes, to gentle with Sophia. About his stretched length as he laid across Bonnie and Clyde’s sofa. 

The way Flynn grabbed Wyatt as if he was afraid he was going to lose him. 

The way Wyatt’s heart clenched when he thought he had lost Flynn.

_Buzzzzzzz_

Wyatt’s phone went off and he mindlessly grabbed it, not even checking the caller ID. “Logan.”

“Hello, Wyatt,” Preston said softly.

“Preston?” All thoughts about Flynn and… all that… went away as Wyatt focused on what was happening. “How did you get my number?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she replied off-handedly. “What does matter is, a deal is a deal. True, we didn’t stop Rittenhouse, but you did help me as I asked.”

A sinking feeling, paired with bubbling hope, fought itself inside Wyatt. “What are you talking about?”

“I promised to tell you who murdered your wife… and I keep my word.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. <3
> 
> Yes, I was disappointed in the movie and that kinda killed my Radial Waves series for the moment, but this story will be completed. Only five more episodes to go! More twists and turns to come.


End file.
